Second, without an easily accessible and decently safe market you just cannot trade them for their original worth, as risk lowers the price.
Such a market never existed, the price was artificially higher before because people were buying into the scam that an unregulated securities market could be safe.
Regulations dont make things "safe" they just give a false sense of security. Thats without regulatory capture.
Every investment carries risk. Regulation and enforcement of regulation significantly reduces it.
Compliance with regulation significantly reduces overall risk for those who comply, and those who invest in compliant companies. For those who are non-compliant, it obviously adds much more risk, as well as for those unaware of the company's non-compliance. Whether it is a net benefit or net detriment is totally debatable, and at any rate, it certainly adds to the barrier of entry most face (on top of cost to operate), while increasing taxes necessary to pay for enforcement. Eventually, you end up with a handful of investment firms handling money because just trying to understand the legislation is a huge cost, decreasing individuals' liberty and increasing centralization, which increases the chance of systemic failure. Hell - we're seeing how centralization's risk of systemic failure can ruin everyone who thought they weren't directly involved right now. A house of cards was built up, knowingly by some, unknowingly by others. There was so little direct investment in producers, almost everything collapsed once it was clear Pirate isn't repaying. I mean, you can have just a handful of people who are compliant with harsh regulations, but once one of them lies, they have so much money, EVERYONE goes down. This "house of cards" scenario also proves that just because there is regulation and enforcement, people won't necessarily comply. GLBSE was almost certainly operating illegally, but right in the thread, you can see the mPEX spokesperson trying to convince people to shift securities over to them. - And when mPEX or Cryptostocks or whatever else goes down, you know there'll be replacements. For everyone who defaulted on their funds, you know there'll be replacements for them, too, and it doesn't matter how rigorous government enforcement is. The government could've raided 10x as many speakeasies and poisoned hundreds of times more alcohol, but there still would've been just as much (or, if history books are to be believed, more) alcohol consumption. When there's demand, it will be filled, and many people just aren't going to tolerate non-alcoholic beer, low-yield funds, or wearing a seat-belt. All you can really try to do is kill or imprison as many people as possible, which has clearly worked in the USG's War on Drugs, War on Terror, and War on Obesity (imprisonment for "contributing to Obesity" is still pretty minor and isolated, though, which is probably why the US is gaining more weight per capita -- I guess we need to start executing fat people, fast food franchise operators, and grain farmers -- fruit farmers, too, if they sell to juice producers, and obviously we need to execute fruit juice producers).
Anyway - it's not something that's isolated. Crime pays ("everybody does it, everybody loves it"). Drugs in the US have become an economic opportunity for America's poor, even if many wind up in prison chasing their dream of financial stability. I lived in North Carolina for a while. The original idea was to convert a partner's dad's warehouse into a PC sales/repair/rental unit with a free cafe as a community service. Only when I committed to moving did I actually walk inside the building where I ended up living for half a year (alternative was living with his bipolar aunt, and I'm a fairly private person). The warehouse was occupied by a schizophrenic sign-painter who was there during the day in the building which should've been condemned due to the many large holes in the ceiling. It was not zoned residential, obviously, nor was the neighboring warehouse which I was shocked to soon learn also had a permanent resident. What I eventually put toward renovating the warehouse was converted to buy him weed inventory from a source in CA after the contractor fell through the warehouse roof, cost us a couple thousand, and utterly failed at his patching job. The weed money (ended up only ~$4,000 after the contractor and paying his aunt to keep her residence after she was denied disability) ended up sustaining us in sub-leasing one of his friend's apartments (he defaulted on a loan and left half the money under the mattress as he was supposed to, so my partner got some extra cash from the defaulter's parents, and I raided his liquor stash which ended up being the only product I consumed illegally [due to age] during my stay there). It also provided us a very livable income - enough to also sustain his aunt's existence and in trying to get her kids back from CPS - and a surprising number of respectable white-collar contacts (due to what, specifically, he was selling, and perhaps his lack of appreciation toward people calling him to say something along the lines of "this shit you sold me tastes like purple." "THE FUCK?! WHAT THE FUCK DOES PURPLE TASTE LIKE, MAN?!! THAT'S A FUCKING COLOR! YOU CAN'T TASTE THAT, YOU STUPID SHIT! I AIN'T GOT TIME FOR YOUR FUCKING STUPID SHIT!" *click*). I was surprised one day when one of his clients came over and asked him for a much harder drug. He reacted violently (certainly not unusual, though not something I didn't appreciate) and told him to get out. He didn't do this because it was illegal, but because he opposed dealing the drug on moral grounds. He did have issues with selling cigarettes, too, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to have them smuggled into the jail while he was in on unrelated charges. He did worry about being caught, though. He was always on-edge and would occasionally berate me for actions which couldn't possibly be justified as putting us at risk (I once indirectly contacted a wholesaler through someone I trusted instead of contacting him directly, for example. He responded to this by punching a hole in his aunt's wall, screaming at me, and speeding off in "his" [my] car). I believe he's a lumberjack, now, though I'd be surprised if he did nothing on the side given he really has a knack for it. I won't say he never did anything shady, though. I had trouble appreciating how much he "hydrated" his product before someone came over to purchase.
Gee - that got a bit off-topic. Anyway, if the USG banned water consumption tomorrow, you'd get anti-USG sentiment and decentralized, increased sales of water at lower prices than what was previously offered because now no producer complies with laws, so why bother complying with regulations previously associated with bottling and selling water? Unless the USG can create moral outrage over water consumption, drug consumption, non-compliant securities offerings, or violence against USG occupation, they can't win. You have to change people, not laws, to change society, and changing laws doesn't change public sentiment except maybe where there's some type of personality/religious cult involved.