ABSTRACT

Human potential is the world’s greatest natural resource and the wellspring for all social, scientific and economic progress. The freedom to pursue our potential and have ownership over returns on the labor performed in that pursuit is foundational to the preservation of human dignity, and a fundamental tenet of humane, prosperous societies. What’s more, the open exchange of both tangible and intellectual outcomes of that pursuit determine the rate and direction of human progress across time and geography.

Currently, it is impossible for businesses and consumers who support the protection of human potential, the fundamental individual right to its fruits, and the expansion of its free and open exchange to know, beyond a reasonable doubt, they are not supporting the exploitation of human potential throughout the global supply chain, particularly in the form of forced labor.

There have been extensive efforts to apply technological solutions to the tracing of products through the supply chain for both inventory management and environmental-sustainability benchmarking. Unfortunately, when it comes to labor, efforts to improve conditions and prove compliance with trade regulations have relied on cumbersome and reactive methods that are vulnerable to corruption and fail to leverage both the technological advances available to us and the spirit of decentralization that reaffirms the very principles of flourishing we seek to defend.

Vita Rete’s global network of fraud-resistant, worker-verified labor compliance is catalyzing the future of ethical commerce and building a powerful engine for global economic insight.