people are living too long

Spoken like someone young enough not to have any degenerative diseases.

"...it's going to destroy itself no matter what."

I strongly disagree, and can provide sources of means to prevent that destruction, which consist of the excessive fortunes of the particularly acquisitive investors in corporations that have committed innumerable crimes of bribery and larcenous thefts to accumulate such fortunes on the backs of the people that have produced the wealth those investors have monetized.

Just for demonstration purposes, I'll start a list. Stop me when I get to someone you reckon hasn't somehow stolen by fraud or other criminal mechanism a significant portion of their fortune, or inherited it from someone that did.

Musk, Thiel, Trump, Soros, Gates, Ellison, then the Rockefeller, Rothschild, Morgan, Dupont, Carnegie, Jay, Bronfman and etc. fortunes. It's a short list because I'm not spending any time on it, but a few $B's here, a few $B's there, starts to add up to real money, particularly when there's no doubt some fraud to trim from SS, if Ol' Muskie hasn't already trimmed that fat by ending payments to double centenarians.

"...the old farts in charge of the system are the ones benefiting from it."

As an old fart that has been physically disabled since injury to my back in the 90s, and that to this day does not seek nor receive any benefit from the Social Security system that would easily provide such benefits if I did seek them, I assure you there are folks that continue to not only pay their own way but to pay into that 'Ponzi' instead of draw it down.

It's not a Ponzi, which is a criminal enterprise intended to defraud. The retirement system was intended to be improved as it was known advancing understanding would enable, and the rapid reduction in family size was not a predicted, nor predictable, metric when SS was created. It has been a real metric that has impacted SS, however, and does require just adjustment with the better understanding of economics available today. It's just too bad that political understanding hasn't advanced commensurately, nor has the arrogance of youth been tempered by claimed advances in psychological sciences, which are pretty much so degraded by politics as to be military rather than medical science today.

A word to the wise. Old age and treachery will defeat youth and enthusiasm every time, and nothing has changed regarding that aphorism since it was stated, whenever and by whoever first said it. Good faith covers a multiplicity of sins, and when you find yourself old enough to consider this topic to directly affect your survival, let's hope you have successfully approached it with nominal good faith before then to merit such grace as will - or won't - be available to you then.