[weberc2]

I wonder if there are any organizations that can certify products and brands. From inhumane conditions to poor quality to scammy marketing and outright fraud (especially on Amazon), I want to avoid Chinese products as much as possible. It’s difficult to avoid completely, but there’s certainly a lot of low hanging fruit.

[jessaustin]

Where do we buy mobile phones with no Chinese components?

[blotter_paper]

In fact, any organization can do this. In the vegan/vegetarian/organic/non-GMO food space there are multiple competing certification programs. The LSD Avengers used to fulfill this role on the old Silk Road. It seems there is at least one NGO that specifically certifies goods as made in the USA, though I have no idea how legit they are: https://madeinusacertified.wordpress.com/

[weberc2]

I agree that any organization can, but I don't know of any. I'm vaguely aware of orgs that certify organic/non-GMO/etc and presumably someone certifies kosher food and conflict free diamonds and the like, but I'm not sure of any that certify labor conditions or that a given company operates with some baseline of ethics and is subject to accountability.

[blotter_paper]

Aaah, I thought you were going for a made-in-America production certification, not a generally-good-people production certification. The term you're looking for is "fair trade." Here's one example of such an organization: https://www.fairtradecertified.org/

[weberc2]

Thanks for pointing me to fair trade; I'll have a look. There are a lot of things I'm interested in, but mostly they fall into one of a few groups. For any given product, I want to know:

1. If (or to what degree) the product was made via exploitative labor conditions

2. How harmful is the product to the environment (manufacturing through disposal)

3. Does the product benefit from subsidies? (e.g., is a foreign product cheaper only because shipping is heavily subsidized relative to a local alternative)

4. Is the product I'm buying reasonably advertised. If the product is fraudulent, can I trust that the company (including investors and leadership) will be held to account or will they simply rebrand and continue their scheme? This concern spans the gamut from Walmart selling name-brand merchandise from low-quality OEMs to companies paying for fraudulent Amazon reviews.

There are probably other concerns as well. In my experience, these concerns seem to be highly bimodal. On average, products which are not Chinese (i.e., not sold/manufactured/etc by Chinese companies) score very highly while Chinese products score very poorly. So while it would be great to have some certification provided for each of those concerns, I would settle for some certification with respect to whether the product is Chinese or not (of course, if that certification took off, there would be all sorts of issues with enforcing it--Chinese companies could operate shell companies and so on).

[blotter_paper]

Labor conditions and pay are theoretically covered under fair trade.

> How harmful is the product to the environment (manufacturing through disposal)

This one is more in line with Cradle 2 Cradle: https://www.c2ccertified.org/

> Is the product I'm buying reasonably advertised.

I'm unfamiliar with this organization, but a search popped up the Trustworthy Accountability Group: https://www.tagtoday.net/certified-against-fraud-program/

I didn't find anything on my first page of results for certificates of non-subsidisation.

[weberc2]

Wow, thanks very much. I spent a good chunk of Saturday morning googling around for something like that last one. I’ll look into all of these.

EDIT: TAG seems to focus on eliminating fraudulent Internet advertising; it's a much narrower scope than I had in mind.