Successful self-binding commitment depends on trustworthy others enforcing it

Evidence

Of course, it is also the case that Odysseus could trust his fellow wanderers not to hear his pleas during the critical period in which he begged for release. Otherwise he would not have had the option of binding himself. Odysseus’s customary self had, as game theorists would call it, a first-mover advantage over his bewitched self. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 828

Categorization

• XREF: Odysseus’s bind fails without the crew’s trustworthiness — reinforces the reader’s thesis that trust requires reliable external constraints on opportunity.