Or, at the most charitable, people in really bad places (either by choices or bad luck)... and are doing what they need to get by.

And honestly, habitually soliciting money from friends shares a lot of similarities with using venture capital -- the reasoning that it's better to explode with someone else's money than your own.

To be fair, the stock market has been invented to spread risk. Better to own 10% of 10 boat expeditions than only one whole boat.