President Donald Trump (R) is loosening the restrictions on what 401(k)s are allowed to contain in their investment options. His EO has directed the Labor Department, which oversees the rules governing business’ 401(k) offerings, to consider additional, non-traditional investment vehicles, things like private equity, real estate, and digital assets such as bitcoin.

Hal Scott and John Gulliver, Committee on Capital Markets Regulation President and Executive Director, respectively, argue in favor of this move on the grounds that

investment opportunities in public markets are shrinking. In 1996 there were roughly 8,000 public companies, but that number has since declined by half. Why? Because public companies are subject to increasingly burdensome disclosure obligations, compliance costs, and litigation risk, while private companies aren’t.

They’re right in the sense that overregulation by an ever more intrusive government keeps tying increasing numbers of hobbles onto our investment opportunities, and they need to be rolled back. They’re right, also, in that Trump’s EO moves to sidestep some of those regulations; although workarounds always are suboptimal. Better to eliminate the hobbles.

I say they’re right, though, on an additional ground: more opportunities for and flexibilities in investment are intrinsically good and should occupy a central place in a free market economy.

However.

These added opportunities bring with them added, and harder to measure or even to estimate, risks inherent in those opportunities, especially for retail investors. These things also are not as liquid as the more traditional 401(k) investment vehicles, and that carries its own added risk. Then, too, some of those vehicles carry added tax complexities. See Master Limited Partnerships and Real Estate Investment Trusts, for instance.

None of that is an argument for not getting into these investment vehicles, nor is any of it an argument for a nanny state to “look out for us little guys” by telling us we can’t use them. It is an argument for added caution and more careful vetting—especially by us unwashed retailers—of those opportunities before jumping onto them with both feet and our elbows, too.