To be clear, the moment one is accredited they can make all the dumb investment decisions they would like. However, beneath a magical line of $200k per year salary the government prevents you by legal force from doing so. When you make above that number you are free to be dumb. I'm advocating letting everyone make their own decisions, for better or worse.
(1) A program that meets that vast majority of your requirements exists and exhibits terrible adverse selection issues, so you propose... expanding it? In the hopes it gets... better? Any thoughts on why that would happen?
(2) The $200K salary line is "magical" but does represent middle-class in 100% of communities in the United States. IMO it should have been indexed to inflation ($3-4M in annual income inflation adjusted), bringing it quite a bit higher. You can also qualify on the basis of $1M in assets excluding your principal residence. This provides adequate buffer in the event your investments fail outright, which the vast majority of early stage investments do. It's the same reason a 20.9 year old can't buy beer. You draw the line somewhere, for better or for worse.
(3) To the best of my knowledge there are no legal repercussions for you for investing as a non-accredited investor, though there may be for the company for failing to follow proper procedure.
(4) These laws weren't brought in because too many poor were getting rich too fast and there wasn't enough room for all the yachts in Boston Harbor. It was due to large-scale speculation literally causing the great depression [1].
(5) Remind me who pays for the welfare programs when people who aren't in a place to take financial risks, the most desperate usually, are pushed into insolvency? Taxpayers. That's why taxpayers also get a say in who can invest.
(6) Your argument reads a lot like the people who want to kill off the EPA because the rivers haven't caught fire in a while. There's a reason they don't catch fire.
It's a philosophical disagreement - I don't want the government picking who can and can't invest their own money into what investments. Many developed countries, such as Switzerland, have no such laws and the world isn't crashing down for them.
Which developed nations are you referring to exactly? Australia, Brazil, Canada, the entire EU, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore and the US all have accredited investor rules. The US is among the least strict. [0] It seems like Switzerland has a similar model [1, 2]:
(1) According to Art. 10 Para. 3 of the Swiss Federal Collective Investment Schemes Act (CISA), qualified investors are considered:
(e) High net worth individuals
(3) A high net worth individual is someone who can confirm in writing that they directly or indirectly have net financial investments of at least 2 million Swiss francs.
Either way, you've again side-stepped every salient point. It's fine to have a philosophical disagreement but we should be able to discuss the facts at hand. Philosophically I don't think the government should be able to tell people what they can and can't dump into the rivers because it's in their interests only to drop safe stuff in there. Reality, however, indicates that in fact that's an awful idea and we shouldn't let them.
Sadly, facts get in the way of philosophy. That's why we have regulations.
Either way you fall prey to the classic libertarian fallacy, that an individual doesn't affect the society around them in any way. Yeah you go broke investing in the South Seas 2.0 company, or BTC at $19K. Cool. You own and sell property at a loss, now you affect your neighbors property values. Now you're on welfare, and on medicaid, and now all of society has to pay for your poor investing decisions. The law is how society mitigates this risk.
