Trustworthiness collapses once a relationship’s end becomes foreseeable

Evidence

Hence so long as he can foresee two more plays of the game beyond the current play, it always serves his interest to repay the money. Once the relationship is clearly over, however, and there is no longer any chance of reprisal, there is only a short-run gain from a single final loan, and that is substantially trumped by the gain from cheating and keeping the 4,500 rubles (plus any profit he has made from them). — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 116

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Directly connects to Hardin’s encapsulated-interest account of trust being grounded in incentives rather than character — and to the reader’s Saramago integration where trust requires observable constraints.
• DEEPTHINKING: The end-game problem as the structural Achilles heel of all incentive-based trust has wide implications for organizations, friendships, and states facing foreseeable dissolution.

Related

• Trusting cooperation persists only while the trusted party foresees future plays (similarity 0.87)
• Trust collapses when escalating stakes make an ongoing interaction feel one-shot. (similarity 0.80)
• Ongoing relationships make defection costly through forgone future gains (similarity 0.79)
• Trustworthiness persists only while future gains from the relationship outweigh defection (similarity 0.79)
• The threat of ending an exchange is what enforces trustworthiness (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Relationships that must escalate invite trust disruptions that mimic endgame effects #qualifies (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 696