Comment by WheelsAtLarge

Yes, it would be great to have a second source but no one has the resources the government has to gatherthe data. They do a pretty good job and they try to be as accurate as possible. I can't see any another organization gathering the data without needing to be greatly compensated.

As far as trust, there have always been people that have and will criticize the results but they only have a small view of the prices which doesn't give a true view of inflation. So their criticism is invalid.

The problem with a decentralized version is that people will need to be compensated. People might get together to do it a few times but for it to be useful it needs to get done for as long as there's an American economy. It won't happen without some kind of compensation.