 Though the so-called ‘moral emotions’are extremely useful for maintaining commitment, they are not necessary for it. Larger human institutions are, famously, highly morally obtuse; however, commitment is typically crucial to their functional logic. For example, a government tempted to negotiate with terrorists to secure the release of hostages on a particular occasion may commit to a ‘line in the sand’ strategy for the sake of maintaining a reputation for toughness intended to reduce terrorists’ incentives to launch future attacks. A different sort of example is provided by Qantas Airlines of Australia. Qantas has never suffered a fatal accident, and for a time (until it suffered some embarrassing non-fatal accidents to which it likely feared drawing attention) made much of this in its advertising. This means that its planes, at least during that period, probably were safer than average even if the initial advantage was merely a bit of statistical good fortune, because the value of its ability to claim a perfect record rose the longer it lasted, and so gave the airline continuous incentives to incur greater costs in safety assurance. It likely still has incentive to take extra care to prevent its record of fatalities from crossing the magic reputational line between 0 and 1.