Genuine trust requires one’s own freedom to exit a relationship

Evidence

Our relationship with people who are to some extent free must itself be one of limited freedom. It is a freedom in the sense that we have to have a choice as to whether we should enter into or maintain a potentially risky relationship: it must be possible for us to refrain from action. If it were only others who enjoyed freedom, while we had no alternative but to depend on them, then for us the problem of trust would not arise: we would hope rather than trust (see Hart’s discussion of reliance, and Luhmann’s of confidence, this volume). — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2727

Categorization

• DEFINE: Specifies the crucial boundary between hope/confidence and trust: trust presupposes a real exit option for the trusting party.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Saramago synthesis: blinded characters who cannot exit their interdependence are in a state of hope/confidence, not trust, under Hardin’s logic.