I think there are strong arguments for revisiting the accredited investor criteria, but you're missing an important fact: wealthy individuals have access to resources, like attorneys, accountants and financial advisers, that the less well-heeled frequently don't have access to. So even if accredited investors themselves aren't sophisticated, they usually aren't without the ability to protect themselves.
> With companies staying private longer, most of the growth in high growth startups is only available to the wealthy.
A lot of proponents of Title III offerings use the "average Americans are being denied access to the opportunities the wealthy have" argument but it's not as convincing as it might seem.
First, most Americans are currently not investing in the public markets[1], many because they don't have the money to. They have therefore missed out on one of the greatest bull markets in history, central bank-inflated or not. Providing greater access to private markets doesn't do anything for those who can't even afford to participate in the public markets.
Second, there are plenty of publicly-traded vehicles that provide access to private market investments. For example, for those interested in tech, GSV Capital (ticker: GSVC) owns stakes in pre-IPO darlings like Dropbox and Palantir[2].
> A similar thing happened three years ago with "rich person" crowdfunding – many critics speculated only bad companies would use it, not-bad companies started using it, and now it's generally accepted.
Are you referring to 506(c)? Adoption of this has been tepid at best.
[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/09/half-of-americans-avoid-the-s...