> No worries, I'm here to discuss and learn things, so happy about your reply!
Thank you! I enjoy discussions with folks like you.
> Maybe for the first time.
If we're having regular bank failures, we're going to enter "failed state" status. Can you name any nation which regular bank failures which isn't a hellhole?
People don't learn from once-in-a-lifetime events.
It's also not what I want people to learn. Systems like this ought to work well enough in a well-governed country that ordinary individuals don't need to think about it.
The US has problems, but not at the level of people worrying if their bank accounts will disappear tomorrow.
I also want sufficiently functioning police departments that people don't need to worry about how to defend themselves. There are things which ought to work. Retirement savings ought to be one of those.
> For instance, the state can give a guarantee for only a limited amount of money (think $20k or something like that) per person and/or institute.
The current limit is $250k. This seems reasonable, and potentially low. I'd set it at $1M, and include accounts like 401k and IRA accounts, so your retirement investment savings can't disappear in a poof for reasons outside of your control. If I bought stocks, I can (and should) expect their value to change, but I should be able to count on Fidelity safely making sure those are still my stocks.
> Second, it might very well be that banks will come up with two different kinds of accounts.
It might well be. 0.1% of the population will chose wisely. Like medicine, this is something you want to just work.
> I believe that for your health, your relationships (friends, familiy, ...) and your finances, you cannot delegate that, you must keep control yourselve. You can get people to help you, but in the end both control and responsibility are yours. That's what I think works best.
Why? All evidence suggests the contrary:
- People seem happiest in communal societies, where they don't pick their friends or family. We evolved in tribes.
- I'd love to live in a structure where I get healthy food and plenty of exercise as a "default." Staying healthy with companies marketing high-sugar foods, and obsolete parts of my brain pushing me to be lazy, is a constant uphill battle. I'd stop short of a mandate, but if everyone is healthy, we're all better off.
- Finance is a black hole for most people. People ought to be able to trust that if they work hard, they'll be able to afford basic food, shelter, and medicine (including in retirement). It feels like a trap to make people manage this.
If my life consisted of:
- Wake up for morning exercises. There are plenty of communal spaces for exercise. Volunteers run free dance, martial arts, yoga, etc. classes. My taxes fund the space.
- Work hard on open source, which benefits everyone, for some number of hours
- Spend time with my family
- Not worry about much of anything else, and count on systems working
I'd be pretty happy. We haven't figured out how to do that, but utopian ideals don't have everyone needing to investigate their local hospitals for corruption, banks for fraud, and mastering medicine and finance. As a nerd, I enjoy learning about those, but it shouldn't be mandatory.