We seem to have gotten very good at building marketplaces for standardized things and surprisingly bad at matching people when competence is hard to measure in advance
Genuinely qualified candidates are hard to find, nearly half of candidates are worse than average, and there are still skilled bullshitters aplenty.
Oh, and people who are good still cost real money.
So a chain of trust naturally accumulates over a lifespan- and by the time you will be as old as your dad was at point of reference, you actually would have a chain. Depending of course on the quality of acquaintances. As kid, all you have is your parents and relatives. Some with wild swings. We all had that story telling grandpa whose tall tales we proudly propagated.