I don't even understand what worse you are talking about. Was I don't mean that as an argument against regulation not a clear enough disclaimer that I wasn't arguing against regulation?

I don't have a magic information oracle, so I can't show you what the US economy would look like if there had never been an SEC, but I sort of expect that there would be less individuals that held stock in giant companies (because I expect there would be less overall investment and I expect that people with small amounts of money would be less inclined to expose it to an unregulated stock market).