On this account, trustworthiness is, in a sense, prior. Hence there is reason to suppose that it is the rise of trustworthiness that allows for the development of complexity, which actually results from successful trust. Trustworthiness not only enables us to handle complexity when we have it, but it also therefore enables us to develop complexity.

XREF: Connects to theories of social capital and institutional trust as prerequisites for economic and organizational complexity.

Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, loc. 683