>How come it's okay for private defined benefit programs but not
>the biggest defined benefit program of them all? Unions don't
>seem to have the problems you envision (how to vote the stock,
>which manager to patronize, etc.);
No they don't because the law requires them to depoliticize fund management completely. So workers' money is appropriated by a bunch of portolio managers, where it's managed and voted according to their class interests.
Or, as the Old Man said: "What the speculating trader risks is social property, not his own. Equally absurd now is the saying that the origin of capital is saving, since what this speculator demands is precisely that others should save for him."
Doug