Trust requires genuine choice, occupying the space between determinism and indeterminacy

Evidence

Many writers therefore suppose that trust is inherently embedded in uncertainty. “For trust to be relevant,” Diego Gambetta (1988, 218–19) says, “there must be the possibility of exit, betrayal, defection” by the trusted (see also Yamagishi and Yamagishi 1994, 133; Luhmann 1980, 24). More generally, one might say trust is embedded in the capacity or even need for choice on the part of the trusted. Giving people very strong incentives seems to move them toward being deterministic actors with respect to the matters at stake. At the other extreme, leaving them with no imputable reasons for action generally makes it impossible to trust them. Trust and trustworthiness (and choice and rationality) are at issue just because we are in the murky in-between land that is neither deterministic nor fully indeterminate. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 106

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines trust’s essential precondition: the trusted party must have real discretion to betray, which coercion eliminates.
• XREF: This directly underpins the blindness analogy: when sight vanishes, the trusted have no observability to exit or defect — collapses trust’s precondition entirely.
• QUESTION: If strong incentives render actors ‘deterministic’ and hence untrustable in this sense, does the doctor’s wife’s relationship to the blind remain trust-based at all, given her extreme situational advantage?