By creating guardians of trust, we foster all kinds of ancillary certifications or guarantees of trustworthiness (such as government registration, CPA certifications of financial statements, credit ratings, licenses, lie-detector scores) that are readily manipulated yet are now essential to principals who have abdicated their distrust to these new guardians. Hence, as Granovetter has suggested, the proliferation of trust-trustees increases the opportunities to exploit less wary principals.

XREF: Relates to the broader discussion of delegated distrust and how systems meant to build trust create new vulnerabilities, echoing the theme of institutions as double-edged swords.

Shapiro, Susan P., The Social Control of Imper…, loc. 141