Trust expands the complexity a social system can sustain.

Evidence

In a provocative essay, Niklas Luhmann argued that trust serves to increase the potential of a system for complexity (1979, p. 8). As we have seen, the potential for complex forms of social organization afforded by agency relationships seems infinite: global exchanges unencumbered by distance, time, commodity, or familiarity, economies of scope and scale, transactional liquidity, expanding temporal possibilities, protection from risk, the magical ability to create wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts, and a rich material and cultural life. — Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Impersonal Trust, 32

Categorization

• XREF: Luhmann’s trust-as-complexity idea is a classic sociology-of-credit touchpoint, potentially connecting to the ADDENDUM grafting piece on infrastructure — trust as relational infrastructure enabling scale. — connects to: Trusting agency relationships enables complex social organization.; Social complexity forces the shift from personal to impersonal, system-governed trust.; Growing social complexity increases the need for trust in the present (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Trust expands a system’s complexity potential and buys it time #corroborates (0.95)
• Social complexity forces the shift from personal to impersonal, system-governed trust. #corroborates (0.85)
• Trustworthiness precedes and enables societal complexity #corroborates (0.82) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 683
• Growing social complexity increases the need for trust in the present #expands (0.80)
• Differentiated societies need more trust to reduce their greater complexity #corroborates (0.80)
• Trust presupposes a structured environment supplied by the existence of other systems. #qualifies (0.72)