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I think you're wrong about this being a good thing. Currently, all the best journals in most allow anyone to submit. Sometimes you get people outside "the cathedral" getting really novel ideas published and changing fields. Once it becomes too easy for hoi palloi to submit, journal editors will start relying more and more on the author's credentials. Not from Harvard/Yale/Oxbridge? Then you're totally out of luck.
This is a double edged sword. Further gaming of the system means more control over the existing institutions, but it also means more numerous, competent and motivated counter elites.
Some people seem to think Harvard can't purity spiral itself into irrelevance because it's so inextricably tied with the existing power structure. But power structures are not eternal laws of nature.
We've seen this with finance, the level of control there is pretty grandiose (the whole idea of an "accredited investor" is ridiculous to say nothing of AML etc) but that's just put a giant prize on building alternatives. And people did and are.
An "accredited investor" is just someone upper middle class or richer. (Individual income >$200k, household income >$300k, or household net worth ex home equity >$1m all qualify with no paperwork). I don't think it is a good rule, but it doesn't constitute a grandiose level of control. Given the purpose of the rule (that an accredited investor is someone rich enough that the median voter will point and laugh rather than sympathizing if they get scammed), the limits are arguably too low. Selling bad investments to dentists is not pro-social, and if it was illegal the people currently doing it would probably find something better to do.
I think the idea the State can just come in and tell you that you're too stupid to use your own money correctly is grandiose in itself. But I'm more pointing generally at the category of financial credentials. The more esoteric the financial product the more weird hoops you usually have to go through to trade it with any reasonable liquidity. And the more hoops, the more opportunities for exception, and therefore power.
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I'm pretty sure the idea of "accredited investor" is really defining "investors the SEC allows to do extra risky stuff because the median voter will at best laugh when they lose their shirts." It's a glorified CYA measure so the government can claim "freedom" exists without the bureaucrats getting hauled in front of an angry Congress asking why their sympathetic constituents (retired teachers, etc) lost money.
That's a fair assessment, but it's part of a large swath of similar credentials that are meant to split the market between people that know what they're doing and stupid amateurs. In a way that effectively removes both risk and opportunity from you if you're not willing to jump through hoops.
There's a ton of opportunity in investing in startups early for instance, and a ton of money both to win and to lose (mostly to lose), but protecting your average wagie from getting swindled also means he's never going to make it big. And as with any bureaucratic control, there's discretion to make exceptions, which means there's power.
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All being an accredited investor does is make you a target for more scams. That includes those "alternatives", assuming you mean various crypto-related investing efforts (aside from just investing in the coins, not all of which are scams)
Harvard can't purity spiral-itself into irrelevance because it's inextricably tied to the entire leftist power structure. Which is too big and self-reinforcing to fail.
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