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Unfortunately, while "financially-literate high earners" might be able to outperform on returns, I can't see a scenario where Alice, who likely isn't terribly financially literate or prone to long-term decisionmaking (admittedly, this is generalizing heavily about the lower class, but is probably right in aggregate) doesn't get convinced to invest either in high-risk, flashy strategies (NFTs, bro! Can't go tits up!) or outright frauds (Enron, etc).
If retirees ends up destitute from mismanagement of the funds they supposedly saved on their on behalf, it's easily a sympathetic case (and large voting block) that we'll end up bailing them out anyway. I think privatizing would really need a mechanism to prevent this sort of outcome. For better or worse I could point to how the SEC defines "accredited investor" to only allow rich folks to invest in certain poorly-regulated securities. Is Alice prevented from making those sweet returns? Yes. But if high-income Charlie loses his shirt the median voter is just going to laugh, not support a bailout. It's not a good definition, but it seems to work in that context.
If the only options are index funds covering the S&P 500, msci world ex us, Russell 2000, Lehman bond, and average cost of Treasury bonds it's really hard to lose your shirt.
The government is already admistering a plan with those options. Just make the default option a target date retirement plan based on birthday and 99.9% of people will have an extremely hard time screwing it up.
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