Scott Shane advocates for "The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act," which would legalize "equity crowd funding." Why it matters:
Accredited investors willing to invest in start-ups are simply too few to provide enough capital for young companies. My analysis of data from representative surveys of Americans reveals that venture capitalists and accredited business angels make equity investments in only about 15,000 businesses per year. But roughly 150,000 small companies receive informal investments every year. Thus, the vast majority of informal investment comes from unaccredited investors who cannot be solicited online but who learn about the investment opportunities through other means. Equity crowd funding will just improve the efficiency of this process. As anyone with a Facebook or Linked In account knows, allowing people to use online tools just facilitates interactions that people are undertaking anyway.
Meanwhile, Joe Brown gives up on Kickstarter itself:
We look at hundreds of products every week. Sometimes thousands. At first all of us were pretty stoked about Kickstarter, because it seemed like a genuine font of unfettered innovation—the hive mind coming up with products that we truly needed but had never even thought of before. And maybe it was. But it's not anymore. It's a sea of bad videos, bad renderings, and poorly made prototypes. Some might be good. Many are poorly made. And some are downright fraudulent, taking peoples' money without delivering the promised rewards. This has happened to me.
Joshua Gans defends the website.
The Dish 