Desert is felt and is managed at the smallest scale, at the scale of civil society. Repeated interaction between people who know each other allows for the working out of justice as deservedness. People of good will are inclined to develop trust with each other according to a mutually arrived at sensibility about what is just, based on the evaluation and appreciation of desert they project onto and exchange with each other.
In order for that extremely local adjudicating process to work people need to be discouraged from engaging in one-off transactions. The cultural pressure is there in the guise of tradition to keep transactions from being isolated affairs. Society works better when transactions belong to a steady train of transactions, which is to say, when people operate within the context of relationships.
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