[pas]

Is there any serious idea about how a fair pension scheme could/should work without just buying the market? (So in some countries the pension system is just mandated by law, managed by the government. And might be even "guaranteed by law" to track inflation. But in this case it's again exactly the same, your purchasing power of your pension income depends on the strength of the country's economy - which depends on the global market.)

[tomp]

Well, as I expand in the second paragraph above - the ONLY real pension scheme is having kids, and more kids. Everything else is just an obfuscation and/or securitization of this basic fact. If you don't want to work, someone else has to. And if we (jointly as a society) decide that "old" people are more deserving to not work, then, well, we need to make & have enough non-old people.

That's why to some degree I think asset-hoarding (S&P, real estate, cashflow-positive businesses etc.) is a good idea and actually my preferred plan, because I fundamentally don't trust the governments (they're all delusional with their long-term plans re: pension obligations, education, family planning & birth rates, immigration, ...), but at the same time I'm aware of the fact that while this strategy works individually (i.e. if I own more property, I'm better off than the next retiree), it doesn't quite work for the whole society. Pension as a social transfer really is the only way to go.