When is government working right? At best, it's only a few minutes before the smiling psychopaths discover the new toy -- a new toy which helps hold the prey helpless (what happens when you fight back against, say, my sister's one-time date, the cop who bragged about the fun he had intimidating black drivers and making them kowtow?) for the predator.
As for the "tragedy of the commons" -- when the commons existed, a man could feed his family (not well, probably, but still it was food) and keep them warm with what he could glean off the common land. When the commons became enclosures, private land, a common-er (! that's not an accident!) became wholly dependent on the local employer for wages & therefore sustenance, regardless of how much, or how little, he was paid or how well or how badly he was treated. With the loss of the commons, the common-er ceased to be a freeman and became a wage-serf.
Sure, the free life is, obviously, a risky one. The governed life is risky, too. The only difference is, having constructed something (with great effort & ingenuity) to create safety, we have a hard time accepting that it can't work, so we discount the devil we know (government) and let our imaginations run wild with the devil we (think we) don't.