> All these regulations do is drive up the cost of directly accessing public capital markets (at last count, $6 million to do an IPO), and contribute to growing income disparity
There's a fair argument in weighing the upsides and the downsides of registration requirements. But saying the downsides are "all these regulations do" is intellectually dishonest. Lots of scams get stopped, or at least quarantined, by these regulations. The speed with which the ICO market went from zero to bullshit only seems to re-inforce the prudence of these rules.
> $6 million to do an IPO
Having watched private companies spend much more than that to raise private capital, I think it's safe to say filing fees aren't the primary problem the public markets have.
It's not intellectually dishonest, because I'm commenting on the net effect. If people are getting scammed just as much, but from other sources, then "all they do" is the net effect on the negative side.
But fair enough: if you constrain this new internet sector, then you could conceivably reduce scams, just by virtue of forcing people into higher-friction areas of the economy, where less can practically be transacted. I'm sure Cuba has pretty low scam volumes by the same virtue.
>Having watched private companies spend much more than that to raise private capital, I think it's safe to say filing fees aren't the primary problem the public markets have.
Many private companies spend FAR less than that to raise private capital. To claim that a $6 million fee for entry is not going to disenfranchise a huge subset of the population is intellectually dishonest.
There's a fair argument in weighing the upsides and the downsides of registration requirements. But saying the downsides are "all these regulations do" is intellectually dishonest. Lots of scams get stopped, or at least quarantined, by these regulations. The speed with which the ICO market went from zero to bullshit only seems to re-inforce the prudence of these rules.
> $6 million to do an IPO
Having watched private companies spend much more than that to raise private capital, I think it's safe to say filing fees aren't the primary problem the public markets have.