In a provocative essay, Niklas Luhmann argued that trust serves to increase the potential of a system for complexity (1979, p. 8). As we have seen, the potential for complex forms of social organization afforded by agency relationships seems infinite: global exchanges unencumbered by distance, time, commodity, or familiarity, economies of scope and scale, transactional liquidity, expanding temporal possibilities, protection from risk, the magical ability to create wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts, and a rich material and cultural life.

DEFINE: Luhmann's functional view frames trust as a complexity-enabling mechanism rather than a moral virtue.

Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Imper…, loc. 32