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The best argument for the accredited investor rule is that, in the absence of it, promoters will manufacture companies which are difficult to cost-effectively distinguish from actual businesses but which functionally are not and use them to pick middle class' pockets.
This is a different argument than "90% of startups—actual companies operated in a more-or-less-competent fashion—fail, and this is a higher risk than we allow unsophisticated investors to tolerate."
I have a certain degree of respect for that argument, but to the extent I buy it, it suggests a number of immediate rationalizations of regulations surrounding retail investor participation in the core financial markets.
They would probably include a) accredited investor or equivalent requirements for options trading rather than the simple self-certification required currently, b) restrictions on broker marketing, and probably c) disallow either all or a subset of single company securities.
