So who guards the guardians? Trust does. The guardians of trust are held to the same standards of disinterestedness, full disclosure, and role competence as those they oversee. And because of the fear that they are no more likely to abide by these norms than are first-order trustees, third-order trustees of trustees of trust-systems of social control over social-control agents-respond. In complex societies in which agency relationships are indispensable, opportunities for agent abuse sometimes irresistible, and the ability to specify and enforce substantive norms governing the outcomes of agency action nearly impossible, a spiraling evolution of procedural norms, structural constraints, and insurance-like arrangements, each building on the former, seems inevitable. One of the ironies of trust is that we frequently protect it and respond to its failures by bestowing even more trust. In the jargon of investment, we sometimes throw good money after bad.

XREF: Connects to the concept of regulatory trust cascades and institutional design for trust.

Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Imper…, loc. 127