Trust is on the top on my list of topics of inquiry and I have made it one of my main themes in my writings on Debian. Forbes recently published a small piece on the The Economics of Trust, using trust as an example to explain why Somalias economy barely exists while many in the west, notably the US, are thriving. A little reductive but he has something there because indeed, the level of trust that consumers, investors, and everyone else in the chain has to have to make “it” happen is enormous. However, I am surprised he never mentiones the law in name, and contract law to be specific. He sort of subsumes things under formal mechanisms of trust, but it seems like without the law, there would be no trust… in which case, do we still call it trust? or trust in the law that is the condition of possibility for other mechanisms, which do exist. This topic of trust and accountability in capitalism is something that Weber actually spent a fair bit of time in General Economic History for those interested in such topics.