Extended interpersonal trust cannot reinforce itself without external mechanisms

Evidence

I cannot conceive of any mechanism by which such an extended interpersonal trust could, by itself, reinforce itself, however elaborate a belief in it might be, however well justified this belief might be, or however well justified we might succeed in making it. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1585

I said earlier that although one could see the sorts of social phenomena that aristocracies are as extensions in code of interpersonal trust, there was no good reason to believe that they could be trusted. I cannot conceive of any mechanism by which such an extended interpersonal trust could, by itself, reinforce itself, however elaborate a belief in it might be, however well justified this belief might be, or however well justified we might succeed in making it. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1585

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s stated thesis: trust requires observable constraints — this is the lynchpin between Saramago’s collapse and Luhmann’s familiarity/Hardin’s observability. — connects to: Widespread mutual trust alone makes large-scale non-domination freedom possible — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 1300
• DEFINE: Defines the boundary of what extended (impersonal) trust can and cannot do on its own — bolsters the definitional work the analysis needs.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1585