[politician]

The point of the comparison is that the size of networks for which trust is actively maintained are necessarily small due to the expense of maintenance. Indeed, both of your counterexamples have this property.

The OP believes that to be economically viable, trust networks must be large. Hence, outsourced trust.

But I agree with you: once your personal network grows beyond a certain size, the property connecting you directly to any particular node is no longer exclusively "trust", but will increasingly be "convenience". Usually followed shortly thereafter by "abused by".