That is far from the truth. One of the recipients of the 2009 Nobel (memorial) in economics documents cooperative solutions to commons problems: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2...
I have seen an endless procession of game-theoretic illustrations of nove problem solving techniques. In the real world the only technique I have seen work is "hey, you, stop shitting there or go to jail." The reason is that game-theoretic arenas are idealized computational worlds where all the rules and influences are known, while real environments are full of unknown perturbing factors not accounted for in the model.
Don't get me wrong. I would love to see such a real world example, since I dislike authoritarianism. But I'm just not encouraged by what I see. I do know that telling people "things would be better for all of you if..." never works. People would rather suffer than change their behavior, even if a change in behavior is low-effort and brings about an increase in wealth or standard of living. I actually sometimes think the problem is that people are insufficiently greedy-- inertia and laziness is more powerful than desire.
As evidence for my final cynical dictum I present: American eating habits. People would rather be miserable, fat, poisoned zombies than to stop eating empty carbs with a side of sugar and mystery meat. They choose the comfort of the known over a healthier, more alert, and longer existence.
> documents cooperative solutions to commons problems
This is entirely untrue, as should be obvious from the absurd conclusion it forces you to reach.
As an Indian I attribute this to a combination of the bystander effect and broken windows theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)...
By their powers combined, all of us (even those among the 'educated class') turn into captain litterbug.
The only solution that has ever actually worked is for government to step in, tax, regulate, and build infrastructure. I'm not aware of any case in all of history where anything else has been effective.
I think this presents a real problem for libertarian theorists. The ball's in their court-- come up with an alternative mechanism and demonstrate it. Otherwise stop arguing against similar efforts over here to create public transit, common health care, etc.