It's a small pet peeve that anyone refers to these people as "retail investors". They're retail traders, and there's a big difference. The article you linked a few weeks back about sports gamblers entering the fray is a good indication of the level of thought that probably goes into most of these trades. I'm a pretty avid sports gambler, so I know a lot of sports gamblers, and I can tell you that the average weekend football bettor doesn't know simple things like what constitutes a proper hedge and when one would use one. So when a kid starts putting real cash on options trades, shit is definitely going to hit the fan (full disclosure, I've read a lot about this crap even though I don't often play stocks, and I wouldn't have the first goddam clue about options trading).

So yeah, people are going to lose. And yeah, it's sort of their fault and sort of not their fault simultaneously. But the bigger picture here is that hypertrophy in the financial sector has created so many of these problems to begin with (in the same way that corn syrup binging has caused a lot of the obesity problems), but they're both secondary issues of bad tax laws that not only allow for but encourage misbehavior on the part of giant companies. Putting a million new financial regs in place to stop kids from options trading themselves to death is like trying to treat a gunshot wound with gauze. We need better tax law and we need regulators with sharp fucking teeth and bad attitudes.