Facetiousness aside, that's a neat anecdote, but the point stands. Original commentor said there were three options - destitute and possibly homeless old people, after the fact emergency spending, or some sort of pension system. That ignores family/community ties, which is in my opinion a much better solution. You can disagree, but not even presenting it as an option is either being disingenuous or missing a really obvious potential solution.
I guess I tend to group that with the other missing fourth option, "hope everyone saves for retirement". I agree that yes, ideally, people would all find some way to take care of themselves for retirement, whether out of savings, or with family, or some other method. But empirically, in modern societies a lot of elderly end up penniless and alone, so the question is what we do about that.
