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I was wandering the same thing. Quite often the insurance sets a much higher standard than what is legal. I had a lot of fun flying a local police helicopter as a commercial helicopter pilot with the police pilot (who only had a private certificate at the time) simply because insurance required a commercial pilot to be present in the cockpit.

By and large the affordability will keep a lot of people from anything too high performance and dangerous. But there will be a few dead doctors who weren’t dissuaded by high premiums and high gas bills.

The goal of regulation should not be "make reckless endangerment expensive enough that only the plutocrats can afford to do it".

That doesn’t make sense… the vast vast majority of people could never pay the damages of a serious plane crash into another plane or building, regulations or not.

Then why increase the risk and damages by letting private individuals pilot more dangerous aircraft? There are already avenues for people to fly these aircraft that mitigate the risks.

Is the question rhetorical? I don’t see how I could possibly know.