Your "tragedy of the commons" example is exactly what happens, Wolfgang, when people are lacking in intelligent and inspired leadership. If you don't have leaders who are capable of looking at the whole situation and understanding all its factors, then you have the equivalent of a ship that is lacking an experienced captain, a navigator, an engineer, and other required personnel and merely has a whole bunch of uninformed passengers. That ship will undoubtedly come to grief, probably causing the deaths of most who are aboard it.

It is not, however, a refutation of a well-led society which does not utilize money as a motivating factor in people's lives. Not at all.

You could have a society where the motivating factors were: accomplishment, promotion to a more interesting and satisfying job through that accomplishment, creativity, respect, and challenge...accompanied by a responsible approach to managing resources and ecology and population growth.

For a dramatic demonstration of such a society in action, view a series of episodes from the 80's TV show, "Star Trek Next Generation". It was quite advanced in concept, and made our present society appear to be exactly what it is: a horribly primitive competitive mess based on individual greed, violence, and acquisition.

We are capable of better than we are doing. Not Utopia, just better.