It's kind of funny. Some libertarians who want economic freedom might actually be against it. And I am for it, even though I am in favor of a welfare state with safety nets. I guess it's all about what we are faced with on a day to day basis.
I don't have a problem with the JOBS Act, but I would also point out that you cannot look at the JOBS Act in a vacuum:
1. "Accommodative" monetary policy has created an ultra low yield environment that has punished savers and made life incredibly challenging for many investors.
2. The environment has "encouraged" (others might use the word "forced") savers and investors to reach for yield and returns.
3. This reach has resulted in capital misallocation and malinvestment and has artificially inflated numerous asset classes from real estate to publicly-traded equities.
4. A good number of investors who have significant exposure to these asset classes have significant gains (realized and unrealized), which influences their investment decisions.
5. Risk is dramatically being underpriced. You don't even need to look at, say, the corporate debt market. Just look at the terms being offered on some of the Wefunder deals and you can see that risk is being underpriced in the angel market.
Making it easier for companies to publicly solicit investment at the same time monetary policy has pushed significant amounts of money into riskier and riskier asset classes may, in hindsight, prove to be a bad combination for investors who are less sophisticated and/or greedy.
I agree that it is strange, but here is something to think about:
Imagine a world where people are conditioned to believe that they can't make a very bad mistake even if they want to. Objectively they should be able to make this mistake, but if we allow them to, who is at fault? Is it the person who allowed them to make the mistake? I don't think so.
Same idea for libertarians. If we all knew we were going to be in the battle pit, we'd all done hardened armour, but we mostly think we'll be ok, so we don't.
Safety nets have a moral hazard of course. Nothing is perfect. People do fall through the cracks, others take excessive risks and some even game the system (risking being caught and put in jail).
But on net (no pun intended) welfare has reduced poverty. Consider limited liability companies and corporations. They can afford to go bankrupt and starve of resources. The free market discipline can apply to them. But when it comes to living beings such as humans, we need to mitigate the loss.
