I don't get the sense that you read what I wrote. Tax money pots are less worrying to me because the information/skill asymmetries are lower.

In any case, in the US it's still illegal for most investments to take money from non-accredited investors. So yes, this includes your money.

OK, I should have been clearer on what I have been arguing with. Specifically, you expressed this sentiment a few times:

> Even if you don't care at all about individuals getting fleeced by scammers, there's a societal reason. We need investment capital for growth, and we need it to be reasonably sanely allocated

Anytime people start talking about what is acceptably sane and what is not and start restricting investments based on this characterization we create self-reinforcing, traditionalist setups that suffocate everything else.

I don't think that's true at all. The US has one of the most tightly regulated securities markets in the world. But it also has one of the most innovative economies. And our markets are strong enough that foreign companies work to list here to take advantage of the amount of capital available. That apparent contradiction is easily resolved: strongly regulated markets create the kind of trust that draws in the investment capital necessary for innovation.

> The US has one of the most tightly regulated securities markets in the world. But it also has one of the most innovative economies.

I agree with this. However I wonder if this is driven by the setup of the 30+ years ago, when US was effectively the only game in town for quick financing of the innovation (accidentally, when it was a lot less regulated). Such setups, if they work well, can keep going for decades before a slow erosion makes them fail.

I think the litmus test will be the way the US handles upcoming economic challenges. Will it be able to keep innovating or will we just keep throwing money at what worked in the past and do not better than average (which, I suspect, will not be good at all). We will see.