>I do understand the nuance in that the investors are putting their capital on the line, and that is worth something, but a line must be drawn to avoid runaway

>I do understand the nuance in that the investors are putting their capital on the line, and that is worth something, but a line must be drawn to avoid runaway inequality. Agreed. The significance of the capital risk loss on most investors actual livelihoods and future investments is very often over dramatized. The risk is purely capital and at a certain point, capital accumulates capital. Once you reach a certain level of capital accumulation that your needs and even wants are met, the rest by stable low risk and nearly fully secure investments, anything beyond that can be easily risked in incredibly high risk investments (or higher risk investments) in hopes for big payoffs. Rinse, repeat, and you might become stupidly successful or might just dither around being fully financially independent. When people talk about investor risk, they often think about Bob or Pam down the street pulling out their life savings to take a risk and put their all in the business they're going to start up. This isn't how most investors look, most investors aren't taking much of any personal risk other than the risk of not improving their standard of living beyond an already very good standard of living. This type of risk to me is overly rewarded in our financial system. If Bob or Pam fail, they're screwed. If a typical investor fails, they wait until they snowball some more capital and try again.