One might, in such a context, be able to develop a small number of intensive relationships in which trust is justified, but even then, as in Stalin's cruelest years, the people one trusts may finally see it as in their interest to abuse the trust or perhaps to violate it, for example, in order to protect loved ones. … This raises the question of how to create a stable order in which trustworthiness prevails and those who are trusting therefore prosper.

XREF: Connects to work on institutional design, credibility, and how social orders incentivize trustworthiness versus betrayal.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 518