Sorry - I’m a fucking freak and I like this stuff.
Pensions generally are Defined Benefit plans versus 401(k), which are Defined Contribution plans. There are some definitions that lump (k) in with “pensions”, but they are quite different.
DB says “do XYZ and the plan guaranties a fixed percentage of your average earnings at retirement”. The benefit (or the result) is defined.
DC says “employee/employer can make contributions with specific advantages, and what you have at retirement depends on what you put in, and ROI, and market magic”. The contributions are defined.
The reason a (k) plan is powerful is that earnings compound in a tax advantaged environment, and there are fiduciary guardrails around plan administration and governance that better protect investors than the open market.
Pension plans in the US are basically dead or dying - variety of reasons, but volatility of everything and eroding labor negotiating power are easy to blame. Ballooning cost of these plans is also a real problem. Because a pension promises a given outcome, the employer can have enormous liabilities to fund the plan. Inflation, volatility, and business outcomes can put the company in the position where the liability to the pension becomes an overwhelming burden.
401(k) is a really powerful investment tool, with or without an employer match. I wish more young employees understood them better, and were more interested in using them. It’s easy to pine for the pension plans of the past - they have problems of their own that (k) plans do not. Pensions are really designed so that an employee stays at a job for a long period of time before they bear full fruit. A (k) plan is more flexible and transferrable.
Wish I had a pension, but I also don’t have much faith in any company in the private sector having the staying power to make a pension the basket where all my retirement eggs would sit. DC plans can help solve for that.
NNNNNNNEREEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRDDD
It’s like saying “if artistic work/expression changes you, you’re a rube.” What changes you, if not expressive works? Who cares if games mostly describe tropes and isms. I’d argue almost the opposite of what you wrote, but this is the internet, and it’s a boring discussion. Bless up your house. Your experience of reality is constantly being shaped by the by your participation in sensation and your faculties of knowing.
A massage can change you, just as much as a really good meal, or a particular smell, or an advertisement. What is wrong (for lack of a better word) with being changed by an immersive experience in a video game? I guess my questions are: what allows us to validate certain types of experiences that others have, and invalidate others? It’s the prerogative of other minds, no? Do you or I dictate what is of vivifying value? Maybe not. My knowing of words, pictures, sounds, so on, is not yours. Dumb things exist that shape people’s personhood, from time to time. Peace out - I’m compelled to respond by my rejection of this kind of anti-experiential nihilism. I just drank like four beers. They are changing me, as a person.