It has now become apparent that communication is made by people and affects people, but it no longer rests on an unchanging view of what is right or on close personal acquaintance. How is it that, in spite of this, such communications are reliable, and their reduction of complexity can be trusted? How is the intersubjective transfer of selection processes, already accomplished, made possible? We hope to clarify these questions by using the examples of money, truth and legitimate political power.

QUESTION: This frames the central puzzle: how do money, truth, and power make communication trustworthy absent personal acquaintance and shared values? Worth chasing the mechanism Luhmann proposes.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 209