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oh goddamnit this should have been a really obvious insight in retrospect: all forms of pension, state, private, tax-based, investment-based, defined-benefit, defined-contribution, whatever, are based on claims on future production if they're worth anything at all
either you end up with all your taxes going to pensioners or you end up with the entire economy owned by pension funds, it's really the same thing at the end of the day
though there are some notable differences:
- if you think your national economy's economic success will run out some day, but others' won't, buying up those other economies makes sense. i guess that's the point of the norwegian oil fund
- tax-based pensions can be shrunk if necessary. to do the same with private pensions you would have to interfere with private property rights. though they might just shrink themselves if economic contraction is ~uniformly distributed