The result is a confidence game. There are two ways it can be played. Everyone works together and life is good. Or everyone looks out for themselves and life is nasty, brutish, and short. This is not the classic prisoners’ dilemma in which each person has an incentive to cheat no matter what others do. Here, there is no incentive to cheat, so long as you can trust others to do the same. But can you trust them? And even if you do, can you trust them to trust you? Or can you trust them to trust you to trust them? As FDR famously said (in a different context), we have nothing to fear but fear
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