Trust in money is system trust in a function, not in people.

Evidence

Anyone who trusts in the stability of the value of money, and the continuity of a multiplicity of opportunities for spending it, basically assumes that a system is functioning and places his trust in that function and not in known people. Such system trust is virtually automatically built up through continual affirmative experience in utilizing money. It needs constant ‘feedback’ but does not require specific built-in guarantees and is therefore incomparably easier to acquire than personal trust in new and different people all the time. On the other hand, it is incomparably more difficult to control. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 212

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘system trust’ precisely via the money example — trust in a functioning system rather than in known individuals.
• XREF: Core to the reader’s Luhmann-to-Giddens bridge: Giddens’s ‘faceless commitments’ are system trust in expert systems and institutional hierarchies. — connects to: Money lets people do things their individual powers cannot — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 94