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Ultimately retirement always has the same problem: a retired person wants to consume something today without producing anything today. They can't genuinely save

Ultimately retirement always has the same problem: a retired person wants to consume something today without producing anything today. They can't genuinely save it up: if they packed meat in their 20s and wrote code in their 40s, the meat isn't going to be any good and the code will be deprecated in their 80s. The theory of retirement is that there is some surplus of work being produced which can be redirected to people who are not working. A pension plan or a retirement plan or personal savings effectively causes some of your income to be unspendable today, making it today's surplus for today's retirees (even if it causes the value of a database record in your name to increase). But when you are retired, it doesn't matter if that previous surplus was achieved through a pension plan or a retirement fund or personal savings or the kindness of their children: if there is no surplus today, then you can't have it today. When it happens, perhaps it will look like a bank run or a currency collapse or a crash in the stock market. But those are just the economy's way of telling you your society is already bankrupt; they don't necessarily cause the bankruptcy in the first place. So what is the alternative? Is there one? If you want to eat a steak, either you slaughter the cow yourself, or someone else makes more than they need and chooses to sell it to you. The way a retirement is funded might change whether someone with more than they need choose to sell it to you, but it isn't going to make steaks exist.

quacked 4y ago
You are bang on. The question comes down to whether or not you can produce something in exchange for fuel, textiles, shelter, food, medicine, law, and the protection of violent men. If you can't, you have to rely on stashed currency. In the current system, stashing currency slows down the market returns of the people who designed and own the system, so every single facet of life is designed to making stashing currency difficult or ineffective. The only way to care for unproductive populations is to make personal sacrifices and care for them, at a loss/to the detriment of your own possible financial and lifestyle returns.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  There has got to be another way at beating the system but as it stands how does one get over the fact that inflation would wipe away the value of the currency you are holding? Some argue that bitcoin is the answer but who knows really.
  - quacked 4y ago
    My personal feeling is that current currency system is fatally flawed and set up deliberately to not be stable. The plan for continuing market gains is to import consumers, import low-wage labor, and continue to consolidate production into hyper-corporations. I think that eventually something is going to happen that the system really can't account for (famine, plague, war, etc.) and it will be broken down and built "anew", with new norms for behavior and lifestyle expectations. There's no way to beat a game by its own rules when the rules are set up specifically to allow certain parties to take advantage of the game. Apologies for sounding like a high school libertarian, but I can't think of any simpler way to say it than that.

quacked 4y ago

You are bang on. The question comes down to whether or not you can produce something in exchange for fuel, textiles, shelter, food, medicine, law, and the protection of violent men. If you can't, you have to rely on stashed currency. In the current system, stashing currency slows down the market returns of the people who designed and own the system, so every single facet of life is designed to making stashing currency difficult or ineffective. The only way to care for unproductive populations is to make personal sacrifices and care for them, at a loss/to the detriment of your own possible financial and lifestyle returns.

nebula8804 4y ago
There has got to be another way at beating the system but as it stands how does one get over the fact that inflation would wipe away the value of the currency you are holding? Some argue that bitcoin is the answer but who knows really.
- quacked 4y ago
  My personal feeling is that current currency system is fatally flawed and set up deliberately to not be stable. The plan for continuing market gains is to import consumers, import low-wage labor, and continue to consolidate production into hyper-corporations. I think that eventually something is going to happen that the system really can't account for (famine, plague, war, etc.) and it will be broken down and built "anew", with new norms for behavior and lifestyle expectations. There's no way to beat a game by its own rules when the rules are set up specifically to allow certain parties to take advantage of the game. Apologies for sounding like a high school libertarian, but I can't think of any simpler way to say it than that.