There’s no world without identity, reputation, and trust. It’s just that they’re either systematized and scalable, or informal. Systematized has a lot of things going for it over informal; for example, the pharmacist isn’t checking “do I know his family and is their reputation in the community a good one?” or “does he have the skin color, facial features, and clothing of an upstanding citizen?” It is very specifically, how much pseudoephedrine have you already purchased? I call that progress.