> Essentially it is an aspect of bounded rationality.
> People like to continue with existing financial
> arrangements unless they become strongly convinced
> that there is a reason to change them. Lots and
> lots of people in the US, and this includes supposedly
> intelligent and well-educated people, have pension
> arrangements that are simply stupid. However, they
> have them because they were the default option at
> their place of employment and they simply do not wish
> to think about the issue. It is a "waste of their time,"
> or a "nuisance to think about," it "makes my head ache."
I cannot get more than distantly interested in the technical economics, but removed from any economic context this makes good sense to me: "However, they have them [i.e., respond in certain ways in the world they find themselves in] because they were the default option [i.e., those ways, in a world which puts tremendous and constantly varying pressures on them, are simply the most sensible way to survive from day to day -- especially given the invisibility of the future within a commodity social order].
My paraphrase is unsatisfactory, but I toss it in here as a sort of place marker to come back to later.
Carrol