The reality is that as you move up the social hierarchy in modern human society, trust tends to vanish and is ultimately viewed as something only a rube would rely on. This is why contract law exists, doesn't it?

For example, in the upper tiers of corporations all employment is on a contract basis. Nobody at these levels trusts they will be treated fairly and given a severance package if they are fired, without an explicit contract stating the terms and conditions of employment. Contracts are renewed or renegotiated every few years, right? In contrast, entry-level employees never get contracts, they can be fired at will with no warning or severance, at least in the United States where union power is very limited, relative to Europe.

Similarly, look at the prevalence of marital contracts that imply a lack of trust among the parties, i.e. the famous pre-nuptial agreement regarding how the net wealth of the couple will be divided up in the event of a divorce. There's a zero-trust situation that's increasingly common.

It's true that a society where nobody trusts anyone else and all are suspicious of each other's motives is not a very healthy society, but isn't this also the assumption of the economic theorists who claim all humans are basically little more than rational autonomous self-improving algorithms, with net assets being the benchmark of success?