Distrust is unaffordable in aggregate even when exit is feasible from single relationships.

Evidence

An interesting case arises where there is tension between the intensity of our interest in acting and the value of p. We may either not know whether to trust, or even know that we distrust somebody, but if we were to refrain from engaging (or attempting to engage) in cooperation, our losses could nevertheless be unacceptably high: opting out is a feasible option, but we would pay for it dearly. The option of avoiding or exiting from a relationship, for instance, may be present with respect to any one individual agent, but not when considered in aggregate terms: we may have a choice as to which restaurant we assign a high enough probability of not giving us food poisoning, but there are circumstances in which we can hardly afford to distrust all restaurants without perhaps suffering unpleasant consequences. The pressure to lower the trust threshold and pick one of them is substantial. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2763

Categorization

• XREF: This aggregate no-opt-out pressure under the blindness epidemic — you can avoid one person but never distrust everyone — parallels how Saramago’s characters must keep cooperating once all strangers become potentially blind or dangerous. Connects to the reader’s Luhmann/Hardin analysis.