Flipping houses is also speculative, as those who have lost money doing so can attest to. If you spend a lot of time/money flipping a house only to have the ma

Flipping houses is also speculative, as those who have lost money doing so can attest to. If you spend a lot of time/money flipping a house only to have the market tank or you just chose a bad area, then no one buys and all that "value" is lost in wasted resources. Buying stock by definition is purchasing the right to participate in a company's future profits. That's the reward for taking a risk on the company, and the primary metric by which "who can use it effectively" is determined. It isn't and has never been some board of financial justices trying to figure out how reallocate capital out of altruism, otherwise hedge funds and active traders would all be non-profits. There isn't an obviously correct way to do this, it depends on one's objectives. Financially illiterate employees contributing to their 401ks have different needs than hedge funds who have different needs than people trying to build wealth for non-retirement time horizons in taxable accounts who have different needs than people saving in HSAs and 529 accounts who have different needs than Pension funds, among many other users of the market. It's up to the investor to determine their needs, not be coddled by some nameless, faceless system that only permits the lowest common denominator of participation. On a more philosophical note, systems where people can't fail are systems I've experienced professionally (working for companies with political/economic moats so vast they can fail repeatably and not be punished). All it produces in my experience is complacent dead weight and rules to maintain said dead weight that unite to stifle the progress of those who wish to perform or make progress. The systems become benign tumors at best. Now granted there should be some safety nets in place, not everyone can be or wants to be a high performer, but that doesn't mean we should make every room with padded walls. People who throw money into the market without the slightest bit of research should be punished for their lack of planning, same way people who jump off a roof without thinking are punished by injury.