[jordan0day]

That's a bit of a loaded question.

If "laypeople" just means "not financial industry insiders", then no, it's not necessarily bad.

If "laypeople" means "people who haven't bothered to spend any time at all learning how the market works (or at least, how it's supposed to work)", then yes, it's a very bad idea. For those people, the market may end up being functionally equivalent to a casino, but without the free drinks.

[apostate]

I think if an ignorant person wishes to trade stocks, the lack of a platform like this won't stop them. Retail brokers like Etrade and Scottrade got the pennystock crowds long ago.

Mentioned in another reply, I would hope ETFs are available on a platform like this, since they trade like stocks. Hopefully that would allow more people to put small amounts of savings into index funds. That being said, Robinhood wouldn't be very innovative on that front, since many brokers offer the more popular index-based ETFs without fees anyway.