These considerations confirm our conjecture that, under the conditions set by civilized society, personal trust becomes a type of system trust in the ability of systems to maintain conditions or performances which are, within certain limits, identical. Other examples of system trust also show this characteristically reflex engagement with fictions that is functioning. For example, whether one is a member or outsider, one trusts large organized systems which process goods or data, although one knows that the objectives of these systems are not the goals of the people who work in them. Rather one knows that everyone concerned in them must be motivated by complex, prone-to-failure and not readily visible detours to produce four-fruit jam, insurance notices, or whatever.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 257