The purchasing power of money is trusted, although currency is known to rest on an overdraft, so to speak, and is not covered by a corresponding value in the institutions which issue the currency. It rests instead on the expectation, supported by experience, that not everyone wants to turn his money credits into real cash simultaneously. One relies on the fact that the state has the power to guarantee peace and make decisions about problems, although one knows that its power of coercion is not adequate to do these things, if a considerable percentage of the population were to rebel at the same time or refuse to recognize decisions.

XREF: Connects to sociological concepts of collective belief and legitimacy, and to the idea that institutions are sustained by shared fictions rather than physical resources.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 257