Thick trust requires face-to-face mutual knowledge, impossible at modern scales

Evidence

One possible answer to the question is that the only way to produce practices of cooperation is by confining them to persons whose dispositions and character are individually known to one another (they rely on what might be called ‘thick trust’). This is a discouraging answer for modern life; the present point, however, is merely that it is one answer, among other possible answers, to the question of what motivations need to exist in society if people are to cooperate. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 174

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘thick trust’ as individually based mutual knowledge, positioning it against institutional/social trust.
• XREF: Connects directly to Hardin’s assertion that trust requires observable constraints; Saramago’s blindness destroys exactly this face-to-face knowledge.