Large-scale societies cannot ground encapsulated-interest trust and so rely on institutions.

Evidence

It is not only Hume’s government but also institutions in general that are at least partially designed to make them work even if they are staffed by knaves. Trusting in the strong encapsulated-interest sense cannot be sensible with respect to the large numbers of people with whom we typically deal in modern societies. I might be able to develop relationships that ground trust with a substantial number of people but not with the vast number with whom I deal directly and indirectly over my lifetime. Someone living in medieval Iceland might have been able to do that. Among the most striking differences between life in medieval Iceland and life in a large, modern industrial society are the change in scale and, corollary to that, the massive role of institutions in our lives. The law commonly fills in where trust would not be likely. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 510

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies why Hardin’s encapsulated-interest trust is, by construction, inapplicable to the majority of modern interactions.
• XREF: Saramago’s quarantine is a forced reversion to medieval-Iceland scale, which is why the reader can trace the re-emergence of personal trust dynamics.