Anyone who trusts in the stability of the value of money, and the continuity of a multiplicity of opportunities for spending it, basically assumes that a system is functioning and places his trust in that function and not in known people. Such system trust is virtually automatically built up through continual affirmative experience in utilizing money. It needs constant ‘feedback’ but does not require specific built-in guarantees and is therefore incomparably easier to acquire than personal trust in new and different people all the time. On the other hand, it is incomparably more difficult to control.

XREF: Connects to sociological concepts of institutional vs. interpersonal trust, and to Niklas Luhmann's work on system trust.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 212