In fact, this is exactly what insurance companies do every single day. It is in fact what the business of insurance is all about.

They have to have positive returns probability for each of their contracts. Your four grandparents lived into their 90's ? Maybe your life expectancy is too long to retire. No contract for you. That's the result of individual insurance contracts for pensions.

Including much of the states assets, so that's not an argument. Having your money in the bank is not more risky than giving them to the state, and the reason for that is that states have bank guarantees, which are a necessity to have a well functioning financial system.

Do your homework. By definition, the state is less risky than the banks, since it can always rise taxes if needs be : it has access to all of a country's wealth. That's why the government bonds are always the highest rated equity in a given country. The state guarantees banks account only up to a certain amount that's way too low to retire on.

The claim that it is risky is complete and utter bogus.

The fact that millions of people have had their assets wiped out in various crises  in the 20th century shows that that sentence you wrote is complete and utter bogus. Systemic risk isn't zero.

A dozen vs one. Yeah. MUCH better.

A dozen actors in which I have no control, vs one in which I have a voice. Yep. Much better not to run the risk of having a Soros wipe out my pension plan.

In fact, you are argung that Sarkozy is trying to do just that right now.

He's trying, but not having much success. And I had, and will have, a voice in the process, unlike in the case of markets.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères