Building an honesty reputation requires each act be recorded and observable by future partners

Evidence

While all this is true, none of it throws light on the idea of a person acquiring a reputation for honesty by his act. For this we need to discuss repeated plays of our basic game and to assume that the salesman’s behaviour (whether he has sold a reliable car or a lemon) is recorded after each transaction, so that future customers know the seller’s history. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 955

Categorization

• XREF: Core to reader’s Hardin thesis: reputation-for-honesty is precisely what blindness destroys, since acts are no longer recorded. Supports ‘trust requires observable constraints’.