If your last 3 orders of Amazon didn't arrive and you had to sue them to get the money back, will you order there again or will you first try somewhere else?

Trust may not be necessary on paper but it is a huge competitive advantage, and a strong distrust is a total dealbreaker for most potential business partners.

Contracts are sometimes a useful deterrent, because going to court sucks and can cost you a lot of money. They're also not a replacement for trust, because going to court sucks and can cost a lot of money.

Enforcing contracts is expensive, and if someone obtains a significant amount of goods and services the money may not be recoverable even if there's a contractual ability to do so (as it doesn't exist), people may simply go on the run, people may engage in outright fraud.

Trust is vital in a business relationship. Contracts are a useful backup against a legitimate body, but they are not much use against someone who has literally a proven track record of going on the run from law enforcement.

> If you're conducting a business relationship, why are you talking about trust in the first place?

Please don't downvote /u/ThePadawan for this. It is an important foundational question. It is a hard question to answer in the same way that "If you're forging steel, why are you talking about iron crystal structures in the first place?" is a hard question to answer.

I'd be keen to read an answer from someone more articulate than I.

The contract is mostly there so that it's clear what each party is trusting the other to do.

Enforcing a contract is often not worthwhile.