[gamblor956]

Companies can get registered fairly cheaply; a company with almost no assets or value could do it.

The expense comes from meeting the requirements to be registered on a large exchange like NYSE or NASDAQ (both of which are non-governmental entities). This is why small companies that have public stock are traded on "penny" exchanges.

[CryptoPunk]

Fair point. There are the OTC exchanges.

In any case, I don't see any mom and pop shops offering their customers stock. There are only 10,000 companies with stock on the OTC market, out of 30 million in the US.