So what you are basically saying is that the stock market is not really a free market; and has arbitrary restrictions to make everything looks stable and legit. Okay.
I mean, are you surprised that some things are illegal? Of course not, no one is surprised by this.
Could you imagine what a clusterfuck the market would be with no regulations?
Generally regulations are written after clusterfucks have occurred to reduce the risk of them happening again.
It's the same reason we have building codes: after a Great Fire or two happens in a given city, fire breaks are usually mandated.
It’s amazing to me how many times we’re repeating the same mistakes over and over again that we’ve made in the relatively recent past because “it’ll be different this time because technology!” or whatever—and i don’t only mean in the coin sphere.
I work, live, breathe, eat and play with technology however, quite a few people, usually those falling for marketing hype have deluded themselves pretty hard. Humanity scale chaotic complexity problems still exist and technology isn’t even close to solving those and won’t be for a long, long time.
There's a reason for this: while in the short term dropping these rules gives flexibility, lower costs and the promise of new sources of profit, inevitably if unruly capital markets get big, small investors get screwed and a lot of investor wealth gets destroyed. We've seen this pattern a lot over the last two centuries.
Simplistic free market ideology has a lot to answer for: successful markets need well-functioning institutions.
That makes as much sense as claiming that a free society isn't really free because you're subjected to arbitrary restrictions that punish you for stealing and embezzling.