Adding competition makes the economics of trust-building analytically intractable.

Evidence

It seems plausible to suppose that if a record is kept of salesmen’s past behaviour (say through word of mouth) customers will gravitate towards salesmen with a good track record. But I do not know how to prove it. Adding competition among salesmen enlarges the initial game, enlarges the class of strategies from which participants can choose, and makes the problem very difficult to analyse. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1009

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core Hardin/Luhmann project: competition undermines the clean reproduction-of-trust game the doctor’s wife scenario depends on, since the sighted woman’s honest dealing is never under competitive pressure.