Trust is an advance payment that expands rationality by easing complexity constraints.

Evidence

We are now in a position to formulate the problem of trust as an advance payment. The world is being dissipated into an uncontrollable complexity; so much so that at any given time people are able to choose freely between very different actions. Nevertheless, I have to act here and now. There is only a brief moment of time in which it is possible for me to see what others do, and reactively adapt myself to it. In just that moment only a little complexity can be envisaged and processed; thus only a little gain in rationality is possible. Additional chances of a more complex rationality would arise, if I were to place my trust in a given future course of action of others (or for that matter in a contemporary or past course of action, which I, however, can only establish in the future). If l can trust in sharing the proceeds, I can allow myself forms of co-operation which do not pay off immediately or directly. If I depend on the fact that others are acting, or are failing to act, in accord with me, I can pursue my own interests more rationally – driving faster in traffic, for example. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 144

Categorization

• XREF: Directly bridges to Giddens’s faceless commitments — trust as a complexity-reduction mechanism the individual delegates to systems/others to act rationally. This is the core Luhmann mechanism the reader’s thesis hangs on.
• DEFINE: Defines trust as ‘advance payment’ — trust as present action secured against a future course, which is the mechanism that lets cooperation transcend the immediate moment.