Yes, that's called compromise. It's basically one of the foundations of society and civilization. It's not a blocker for public-interest projects.
What if the interested party is clever and defines "in my favor" to be equal to "the common good"? ;)
Far from being the opposite of idealism, this approach is in fact the only one by which high ideals can be approximated in reality.
> You seem to be complaining that something is impossible because it can't be implemented in a perfect utopian way.
Quite to the contrary, the complaint is not merely that the pursuit of these goals would fall short of perfection, but rather that the consequences would largely be the inverse of the intentions.
In essence, idealism is its own opposite -- if you're looking for a single word to describe this critique, some good options might be "correctness", "efficacy", and "reasonableness".
That's not what I'm saying, in fact 'perfect utopian' projects are exactly what I'm expressing skepticism towards. The problems we have with the internet are mostly just symptoms of deeper societal issues, and they arent infrastructure problems that can be easily fixed like a road or bridge with some massive spending bill. If the US actually enforced anti-trust laws and broke up the tech cartels it would solve a whole lot of problems with the internet, but I doubt that idea would get much traction with whoever ends up on the 'new internet committee'. And I dont see it as a lack of idealism, its just plain pragmatism
realism
Societies are not monolithic blobs with a singular "common good" -- they're complex networks of relations among different people with fundamentally varying worldviews and value systems. Making public-interests projects work entails respecting pluralism and individual autonomy. There's no alternative: projects that depend on conformity will inevitably fail.
