[notahacker]

> we're allowed to waste our money on all sorts of dumb bullshit, but not on something like investing in startups, which at least has a possibility, however remote, of resulting in some sort of return

A lower possibility than the casinos or lotteries, if we're talking retail investment in early stage startup pitches you have no affiliation with. The reluctance of everybody to acknowledge this is the reason the law exist. Most people walk out of casinos having lost some of their money. Most retail investors in random business propositions will never see any of that money again.

[ksdale]

It really depends on what you're investing in, doesn't it? We let people spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in casinos over the course of their lives. When you go to a casino, you're paying for the thrill of gambling, and I think random business propositions offer the same thrill at worst.

[notahacker]

Well yeah, depends which number you bet on roulette or whether you're the best poker player in the room too! Perhaps we could regulate startups like gambling and allow them to welcome anyone but only allow them to market the "thrill of gambling" like casinos instead of delivering very confident financial projections about how much they're going to make. But I'm not sure investment would be forthcoming then, because actually I think people want to put their savings into startups to get rich.

When gambling is restricted, gamblers generally don't argue it's a conspiracy to prevent them getting rich. The delusion that retail startup investment isn't the bigger gamble with worse odds (unless you're in the leagues where you can personally prod the founders on a daily basis) is why accredited investor rules exists. It'd be a lot easier to believe arguments relaxing them were sound if the people making them were arguing it was depriving them of fun rather than depriving them of the opportunity to get rich.