Well... how should it work? Any kind of pension system is going to invest at least in part in stocks. Whatever means you use of putting aside money for someone's future retirement, it's probably going to further enrich the financial industry. I'm not sure that's such a huge problem.
The fact that we enrich unproductive people is the least of the problems I have with it.
The main issue is that we're supposed to know how much money you'll need in retirement, and how the fuck am I suppose to do that?
It's impossible question to answer without knowing the future, so the only sensible thing to do is over-save, which is not good for us and not good for the economy (as this was money that productive people could've used).
And on a personal level, why the fuck do I need to spend so much time learning Wall Street bullshit?
When being "good investor" became the most important skill in the world, one that failing in it can sentence you to death by homelessness?
It's unconscionable to me that a person could work all their life, and still not have enough money for retirement because they didn't understand the stock market well enough.
As for solutions, I would just fund pensions from taxes, I know that's never gonna happen, but even a government issues retirement bonds (that is only available to residents) with respectable returns are going to be vastly superior to the crap we currently have.