That doesn’t make sense at all. The raison d’être of SEC is to protect regular mom-and-pop investors. A private company just doesn’t allow anyone to invest in them. Why should SEC rules apply? On what legal basis can you force a private company to divulge its financial details? Would you be happy if you, as an individual, have to divulge your account statements if your own net wealth reaches one million?

It's a corporation, it exists at society's leisure.

It might be necessary to create a legal basis, but it's just a matter of doing it. If the owners don't like it they can dissolve it.

> The raison d’être of SEC is to protect regular mom-and-pop investors

That's not the sole reason. They (should) also enforce a fair even playing field by preventing market manipulation (e.g. how Elon was tweeting about stock prices) and a few other things to "facilitate efficient markets and the formation of capital".

> Why should SEC rules apply?

Because private companies still fall under the jurisdiction of the SEC? See e.g. Theranos.

> On what legal basis can you force a private company to divulge its financial details?

On the to-be-created legal basis that aims to prevent bubble formation and the resulting fallout to the wider society?

> Would you be happy if you, as an individual, have to divulge your account statements if your own net wealth reaches one million?

Sure, why not? It's not a totally unheard of idea. In Norway everyones salary can be looked up.

yeah it's a slippery slope forcing companies to go public at X valuation. who decides that? what number makes sense? etc. but i do think we need to somehow fix massively overpriced companies going public and dumping on retail