You are right. There should be far far more quality checks.

There can be an enourmous difference between UL compliance and CE self declaration. No standard (normal?) business is actively trying to kill its customers, but there are a lot of small companies that love to make a profit by cutting a lot of corners.

That is one of the reasons these kinds of certifications exist in the first place and people should be able to rely on them. You cannot rely on CE and hope for the best.

Having certain UL certifications require rigirous and continuous testing in certified labs or environments. It makes things super expensive, but also very trustworthy. The fines, investigations and lawsuits are no joke. Not even for huge megacorporations. I've seen documentation where for instance General Electric had 48 hours to fix a problem or the product cannot ever be sold ever again, there would be a complete recall on their costs and the company could face banning from doing business completely.

I once had companies design power distribution units that required UL compliance. Price tag for a single unit was pretty insane. Around $400 per unit if i remember correctly. No consumer in their right mind would ever pay that if there is a market with a zillion cheap alternatives.

Even back then the market was flooded with fake CE crap. But it's also incredibly cheap, so lots of people (myself included for some things) buy the cheap stuff. They want the full experience, but don't want to (cannot?) pay top notch for it.

I get why. I get the process where everybody wants to make money. But it wil continue to demand lives, because there will always be people cutting corners if they somehow can and there will always be people who will buy the cheap stuff, because they want it.