IMO, even with any checks and balances, and regulation in place, or the best intentions of the company, it would just take one rogue grader/insider (or worse, more than one) to potentially really hurt, or destroy consumer confidence.
I'm not saying I think it is happening, nor that it will, simply that it could. Given the absolute explosion in price of PSA 10s, and the fact that there is such an incremental price disparity between each high grade, 8 to 9, 9 to 10, the ingredients are there. I think this is made much more difficult to enforce given the subjective nature of grading, and that just about any card graded in the 9-10 range could be reasonably assigned +/- its grade. See any "gem mint" card with an OC back btw. That card could be a 9, or a 10, and the price gap between those two could be tens, even hundreds of thousands. A person manipulating grades would only need do so a handful of times to make some huge money.
I agree with a previous poster that transparency is good. If the submitting parties are truly, beyond any doubt masked from the graders, that's a good start. Then perhaps every card that receives a 9 or 10 initially must be routed past several graders, each of whom have no idea other graders have already assigned it a 10. If say 5 of 5 senior graders independently give a card a 10, it actually receives that 10.
Again, I am not saying I think this is happening, nor am I speaking to PSA's (or any other TPG's) integrity. It just seems the potential for temptation is there, especially now with all the registry 1 of 1, gem mint fever. I don't typically get cards graded (submitted twice, total of 4-5 cards) and don't have a dog in the fight between the PSA's, BVG's, SGC's of the world, however like many collectors, I would be greatly impacted if any one of those companies were ever undone by a scandal, as I have dozens of cards graded by each.
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