Trustworthiness needs no moral groundings to sustain trust

Evidence

Note, incidentally, that trustworthiness would fit this account without a strong caveat parallel to the one required for the functional account of trust. I do not automatically have incentive to trust when I enter a relationship, but I often will have incentive to be trustworthy in order to make that relationship beneficial over the longer run. Hence the condition required for Luhmann’s functional explanation of trust to work may be fulfilled through a functional explanation of the maintenance of trustworthiness. It is not a morally grounded trustworthiness that is required or explained here. Rather, it is merely the trustworthiness of anyone who understands the implications of being reliable in various potentially beneficial interactions if those interactions are likely to be repeated or continued, if they work out beneficially to both (or all) parties, or if there are beneficial reputational effects of being trustworthy. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 676

Categorization

• XREF: At its core a repeated-games insight — self-interested reliability, not virtue, drives trust maintenance. Connects to Milgrom’s repeated-interaction model and the diamond bourse’s reputational incentives.
• DEEPTHINKING: The asymmetry — I have no direct incentive to trust, but I do have incentive to be trustworthy — is a genuinely subtle inversion that flips the standard moral framing and grounds Luhmann’s trust loop in rational self-interest.