Over the holiday, our family had a great debate about the future of Social Security.

One argument was what if those funds had not been "borrowed" and management had been outsourced to private financial advisors which, as an industry, has averaged 5-6% annually, the Social Security fund would not be at risk.

The counter-argument was the consequences of Affordable Care Act and Medicare Advantage outsourcing to private insurance companies.

I argued that there is an alternative solution.

The government should continue to collect funds from individuals and their employers to insure resources will be there when they are no longer able to work or care for themselves. For example, unemployment, retirement, health problem, disability, caregiving a family member or friend or a patient/client who has no resources.

This would be one tax, not multiple taxes. The purpose of the funds is simpler and more wholistic, actually addressing the reality of what happens when an individual isn't working, for any reason, and/or can't care of themselves. It also acknowledges the true cost to caregivers who give up a job, or work with no pay, or have to give up the funds securing their own retirement and health to pay for the care of another.

But the tax payers should have choices on how those funds are managed and spent, as long as those choices don't risk a minimum principle. Giving them choice on how those funds are managed and spent, acknowledges that they have "skin in the game", motivating them to expect more from financial managers and healthcare providers, on behalf of themselves and their society.

Some may have no other funds to manage, others may have other funds to manage and can lower the cost of managing their "Social Security Trust Fund". Some may be in better health than others, requiring less care, they may therefore be the caregivers and need more to compensate for time spent caregiving. Everyone is different.

De-centralizing choices will create a free market where private financial advisors and healthcare providers must compete based on transparently better performance and customization. The government agencies' role would shift to protecting the tax payers’ ability to make good choices, by enforcing existing industry oversight and truth and transparency in marketing to protect “consumers”, eliminating the inherent conflict of interest of government contracts which benefit a few private partnerships with "guaranteed scale".

De-centralization opens the door to innovation through increased competition to appeal to consumers - the good news is that there are lots of new resources that haven't been capitalized on because governmentally protected monopolies didn't need to improve performance.

For example:

- The enormous cost of fraud (both direct losses and the cost of fraud detection) would be eliminated by eliminating the enormous fraud risk of aggregating data in a few easy to find and efficiently hackable data silos shared between government agency and a few exclusively contracted private companies.

- The opportunity to protect data and privacy would be enhanced by capitalizing on the now tried, tested, and much improved de-centralizing data encryption on the blockchain. Additionally, creating a US dollar based encrypted digital coin for Social Security transactions would restore "trust" to the Social Security Trust Fund.

Simplification of tax and purpose, the de-centralization of choice, removing a conflict of interest in government agencies to protect the rights of the tax payers, leverages the benefits of a free market and a democratic government to disrupt the trap created by public/private partnerships.