Withdrawing trust shrinks systems below the threshold for self-reproduction.

Evidence

The lack of trust, on the other hand, simply withdraws activities. It reduces the range of possibilities for rational action. It prevents, for example, early medication. It prevents, above all, capital investment under conditions of uncertainty and risk. It may lead to a bad life in moral terms, because one no longer expects to be rewarded after death. It may reduce public interest in innovative art which is not yet recognized and confirmed by the establishment of experts.! Through lack of trust a system may lose size; it may even shrink below a critical threshold necessary for its own reproduction at a certain level of development. However, the distinction between confidence and trust throws light on the fact that the withdrawal of trust is not an immediate and necessary result of lack of confidence. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1440

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to Saramago’s blindness-society where withdrawal of all trusting activity collapses the group toward a Hobbesian threshold — Hardin’s observability requirement stripped away.
• DEFINE: Contrasts ‘confidence’ (expectation about a system) with ‘trust’ (expectation about a specific partner), a key definitional distinction for the whole analysis.