The first is that trust is not scarce in the sense of a resource that is depleted through use; the second that although it is often a by-product, this is not always so; and the third that there are extremely important cases where self-reinforcing arrangements acting on interests are either too costly (or unpleasant) to implement, or unavailable in the first place because trust is in excessively short supply.

XREF: Challenges common economic assumptions about trust as a scarce good; connects to debates about social capital and institutional design.

Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking…, loc. 2775