Punishment threats must themselves be credible to enforce trust

Evidence

Secondly, the threat of punishment for errant behaviour must be credible, else the threat is no threat. To put it another way, the enforcement agency itself must be trustworthy: it will do what it says and only what it says. I should add, parenthetically, that the enforcement agency may be society at large. Social ostracism, and the sense of shame that society can invoke, are examples of such punishment. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 778

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what ‘credible punishment’ means and lists society-wide social ostracism as an enforcement mechanism.
• XREF: In the blindness epidemic, the enforcement agency collapses along with observability; social ostracism requires eyes to see who to ostracize.