Markets excel at pricing goods. They are less adept at valuing relationships, trust, and social cohesion — the invisible infrastructure that allows complex societies to function smoothly.

This chapter examines how an increasingly transactional economic environment may be eroding forms of social capital that are difficult to quantify but essential to long-term stability. As more domains of life become mediated by platforms, metrics, and market signals, something subtler may be shifting beneath the surface.

The idea of a relationship economy, first articulated as such by Terry Mollner upon his discovery of the multi-sphere juggernaut Mondragón, is not a call to abandon markets. It is an attempt to understand that purely transactional logic may be insufficient. Systems that ignore relational dynamics often pay the price later in the form of mistrust, fragmentation, and institutional brittleness.

The deeper question is whether modern economies can evolve to better account for the value created — and sometimes destroyed — in the spaces between transactions.