public home-improvement retailer
The Home Depot
Industry Retail
A public home-improvement retailer selling tools, building supplies, garden goods, appliances, and repair products under shareholder governance. The Home Depot remains weak because of toxic or materially harmful products and ideological disavowal, even where the product or service has practical value.
Why this matters: Home improvement is useful and often necessary, but big-box public-company retail has weak structural constraint.
Letter grade D Extractive Medium confidence (AI) Rubric gcd-rubric-v1
Final Score
12* D - Extractive
D* Tentative scaffolding score. Not human-checked or final.
Private Government badge
The Home Depot receives the Private Government badge because it combines large-scale private rule-setting over customers, workers, users, members, or counterparties with OpenLobby-documented lobbying of about $21.6M on public policy issues.
Evidence: [9]
Policy Capture: L for Lobbying
The L badge appears when the Policy Capture penalty is severe. Here, L stands for Lobbying: the policy-capture value is -11, meaning the evidence indicates major private-interest lobbying or policy pressure against workers, customers, citizens, affected communities, democratic accountability, or ecological life.
Evidence: [8]
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Evaluation Overview
D - Extractive
The score turns mainly on Extraction, with the largest penalty coming from Policy Capture.
Strengths
- Extraction4/10
- Market Conduct4/5
- Product Integrity4/5
Penalties
- Policy Capture-11
- Toxic Products-2
- Ideological Disavowal-1
Evidence state
- ConfidenceMedium confidence (AI)
- ThoroughnessDeveloped (AI)
- Linked claims9
- Direct axis claims8
- Coverage6/13
Scoring Axes
| Axis | Score | Why this score |
|---|---|---|
Ownership
?
Control rights: shareholder-dominated at 0, worker cooperative control
at 10.
|
1 / 10 |
The Home Depot is a publicly traded home-improvement retailer with a shareholder-governed public-company structure. Linked evidence
|
Governance
?
Binding decision authority: centralized control at 0, democratic
stakeholder control at 10.
|
1 / 10 |
The Home Depot is a publicly traded home-improvement retailer with a shareholder-governed public-company structure. Linked evidence
|
Extraction
?
Surplus allocation, wage share, CEO pay ratio, margins, and structured
extraction judgment.
|
4 / 10 |
The Home Depot is a publicly traded home-improvement retailer with a shareholder-governed public-company structure. Linked evidence
|
Labor Sovereignty
?
Worker power: coercive conditions at 0, co-determination or ownership at
7. Employee dissatisfaction matters only when source-backed evidence
shows concrete limits on worker agency, such as coercive scheduling,
retaliation, wage theft, harassment, unsafe conditions, suppression of
worker voice, or extreme turnover.
|
3 / 7 |
The Home Depot is a publicly traded home-improvement retailer with a shareholder-governed public-company structure. Linked evidence
|
Solidarity with the
Unemployed
?
Treatment of exits and nonworkers, including severance, redeployment,
and non-competes.
|
2 / 7 |
The Home Depot is a publicly traded home-improvement retailer with a shareholder-governed public-company structure. Linked evidence
|
Loss-Bearing Fidelity
?
Willingness to absorb costs to preserve values, workers, users, and
public obligations.
|
3 / 7 |
The Home Depot is a publicly traded home-improvement retailer with a shareholder-governed public-company structure. Linked evidence
|
Market Conduct
?
Pricing fairness, switching costs, lock-in, and rent extraction.
|
4 / 5 |
The Home Depot is a publicly traded home-improvement retailer with a shareholder-governed public-company structure. Linked evidence
|
Product Integrity
?
Preservation of quality rather than degradation for monetization.
|
4 / 5 |
The Home Depot sells building materials, tools, appliances, garden, maintenance, and home-improvement products at large retail scale. Linked evidence
|
Scale Integrity
?
Whether growth improves or degrades fairness and accountability.
|
3 / 5 |
The Home Depot is a publicly traded home-improvement retailer with a shareholder-governed public-company structure. Linked evidence
|
Penalties
| Penalty | Applied | Why this penalty |
|---|---|---|
Policy Capture
?
Private-interest attempts to bend law, regulation, subsidies, taxes,
enforcement, trade, labor, safety, competition, environmental,
healthcare, housing, surveillance, civil-liberties, or consumer policy
against workers, customers, citizens, affected communities, or
ecological life. Public-interest advocacy is not penalized merely
because it is lobbying. Range: -15 to 0.
|
-11 |
OpenLobby records HOME DEPOT lobbying on trade, healthcare, environment, defense, labor, tariffs, and other issues with about $21.6M in spending across 32 filings; the reviewed filings… Linked evidence
|
Toxic Products
?
Current sale of products whose ordinary use, exposure, ingredients,
residues, packaging, or formulation creates toxic, addictive, or
consumer-safety risk. Food products receive at least light scrutiny for
artificial colors, artificial flavors, petro-derived additives,
pesticide residues, contaminants, endocrine-disrupting packaging, and
ultra-processed formulation. Ordinary adult nightlife or alcohol service
is not penalized by itself without evidence of predatory marketing,
youth targeting, addiction-extractive design, or unusual product-safety
misconduct. Range: -5 to 0.
|
-2 |
The Home Depot sells pesticides and pest-control products as part of its garden and outdoor retail categories. Linked evidence |
Ideological Disavowal
?
Concealed ideology presented as neutrality, expertise, professional
necessity, public-service administration, market inevitability, or
non-ideological common sense while exercising power. Range: -3 to 0.
|
-1 |
The Home Depot's public framing is assessed as ideological-disavowal evidence because The Home Depot shows bounded neutrality theater: some contested choices are softened through expertise,… Linked evidence
|
Bonus Credits
| Bonus | Credit | Why this credit |
|---|---|---|
Good Deal
?
Credit for unusually fair value: durable quality, fair pricing, low
lock-in, and clear customer surplus.
|
1 / 3 |
The Home Depot uses large-scale home-improvement retail to offer broad product availability and price competition for common repair and maintenance needs. Linked evidence
|
Confidence Basis
Confidence Basis
Confidence is computed from the evidence trail and review state, not typed into the profile by hand.
Medium 73/100
8 verified linked claims 8 direct axis claims 0 disputed claims 6/13 components covered
This confidence label measures the source-backed evidence trail. AI-scaffolded scores remain tentative until human review.
Claim confidence 19/20
8 verified linked claims
Source quality 12/18
Best source per verified claim, weighted by institutional reliability
Direct axis-specific claims 9/18
8 direct claims across 13 active components
Dispute load 12/12
0 disputed claims on this entity
Recency 10/10
Newest accepted timestamp: May 13, 2026
Reviewer status 7/12
Human-reviewed components score higher than AI scaffolding
Component coverage 5/10
6/13 evidence-bearing components have direct support
Evidence State
Evidence State
Profile stateAI draft / human-pending
VerificationUnverified
ConfidenceMedium confidence (AI)
ThoroughnessDeveloped (AI)
Correction routeUse “Challenge this rating” for
factual errors, missing counterevidence, source problems, or calculation
mistakes.
Company responseCompany representatives can
submit source-backed corrections; payment never changes scores or
reviewer authority.
Claims and Sources
Claims are the evidence record. Each claim needs a source link, axis category, status, confidence level, and timestamp before it can support a score.
* Tentative scaffolding score. Not human-checked or final.1The Home Depot is a publicly traded home-improvement retailer with a shareholder-governed public-company structure.
- Home Depot investor relationsOfficial self-description · 68%
2Home Depot’s investor-relations materials publish annual reports for The Home Depot, Inc., confirming public-company structure and large-scale home-improvement retail operations.
- Home Depot investor relations annual reportsPrimary institutional record · 90%
3The Home Depot sells building materials, tools, appliances, garden, maintenance, and home-improvement products at large retail scale.
- Home Depot homepageGeneral web source · 58%
4The Home Depot uses large-scale home-improvement retail to offer broad product availability and price competition for common repair and maintenance needs.
- Home Depot homepageGeneral web source · 58%
5The Home Depot sells pesticides and pest-control products as part of its garden and outdoor retail categories.
- Home Depot pesticides categoryGeneral web source · 58%
6Home Depot currently lists pesticides and pest-control products as a retail category, directly describes conduct considered under Toxic Products used for this evaluation.
- Home Depot pesticides categoryGeneral web source · 58%
7The Home Depot's public framing is assessed as ideological-disavowal evidence because The Home Depot shows bounded neutrality theater: some contested choices are softened through expertise, public-interest, professional, market, safety, or institutional language, but the record does not show dominant concealment of standpoint.
- The Home Depot official siteGeneral web source · 58%
- Home Depot investor relationsOfficial self-description · 68%
- Home Depot pesticides categoryGeneral web source · 58%
8OpenLobby records HOME DEPOT lobbying on trade, healthcare, environment, defense, labor, tariffs, and other issues with about $21.6M in spending across 32 filings; the reviewed filings document private institutional lobbying over public rules rather than a public-interest advocacy role.
- OpenLobby — HOME DEPOT lobbying profileGeneral web source · 58%
9The Home Depot receives the Private Government badge because it combines large-scale private rule-setting over customers, workers, users, members, or counterparties with OpenLobby-documented lobbying of about $21.6M on public policy issues.
- OpenLobby — HOME DEPOT lobbying profileGeneral web source · 58%
Help Improve This Profile
Submit source-backed evidence or challenge a specific claim, source, axis value, or calculation below.
How This Page Is Maintained
Evidence comes in through contributors, is checked by verifiers, and is synthesized by reviewers. Founder authority remains narrow and visible; scores recalculate when verified claims or the rubric change.
Civic Note
Incorporation, limited liability, market access, and other institutional privileges are public grants. Good Companies Directory treats those privileges as conditional on accountability to workers, users, communities, and the public.
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Audit Log
Recent public changes for this company or group. The full audit log is part of the Transparency record.
Added source-backed tentative evaluation during the everyday-products and useful-shopping expansion pass.
Improved evidence specificity and recalibrated confidence after adding direct source-backed claims. Score values were not changed in this pass.