No. Don't change the question or introduce a red herring. Simply answer it: Do the top 25 hedge fund managers deserve more than all kindergarten teachers combine?
And to your "next up": No. Luck != deserve. That is essentially my point, and the implicit point of the OP. A primitive society leaves all to luck. An advanced, mature, fair society does its best to eliminate chance (e.g. insurance, the root meaning of which is precisely that). The lottery is a patently backward thing (the opposite of insurance) and I'm appalled that our state governments perpetrate and profit from such harmful and exploitative things.
But in this example you're comparing high risk -> high reward vs low risk -> low reward and introducing survivor bias to boot. At some point the representatives of high risk -> high reward (a) decided that they want to pursue such careers and (b) managed to convince a bunch of moneyed individuals and institutions to entrust the money to them. The representatives of the low risk -> low reward group decided against such path.
Basically, to turn the question around, if things are so rainbows and sunshine in the hedge fund land, why don't more individuals make a career move from kindergarten teacher to a hedge fund manager? From your example seems like no-brainer decision, so you'd expect rational individuals to be jumping the ship en masse.
> An advanced, mature, fair society does its best to eliminate chance
Does it? So every restaurant, home-based artisan and photo sharing app entrepreneur has an implicit guarantee of success and nobody ever competes with or disrupts anybody else's business?
> Do the top 25 hedge fund managers deserve more than all kindergarten teachers combine?
These are hard questions to answer. Lot of people can become a kindergarten teacher but not a lot of people can become a successful hedge fund manager. So in the end the free market decides who deserves more.
If you are a school and want to hire kindergarten teacher, you will put an ad and get lot of response, you may or may not want the best because you know that average teacher will be ok too. So you hire the average teacher with average salary.
If you are looking to invest your money with a hedge fund manager you want to go with the guy who has a great historical record but the hedge fund manager knows that too so he will charge a premium but you are ready to pay that premium because of his good historical record.
So the free market decides that average teachers are good enough and they will do the job with average salary. But in the world of hedge funds, average managers are not good enough, you want the best and you are ready to pay a premium to get the best manager.
> If you are a school and want to hire kindergarten teacher, you will put an ad and get lot of response
Given that there is a massive teacher shortage[1][2][3], and there is no shortage of aspiring hedge fund managers, can you come up with a model that reflects more accurately reality?
First of all the shortage is only some specific sectors like STEM or schools in poor areas.[1]
So the question you should ask is why is there a shortage in some areas, it's because teaches are not being paid well so the supply is dwindling. This is exactly how the free market works.
The next question you should ask is why did salaries for teachers kept going down.
There might not be a shortage aspiring hedge fund managers but there is shortage of fund managers which good historical track records so the good ones get lot of investment money.
"...the free market decides that average teachers..."
What is free about the job market for educators? The political process which determines their compensation? The bureaucratic machine which continues to raise the bar (credentials)? The procurement process which diverts tax dollars into crony coffers? The mandatory unpaid overtime?
What, in your opinion, could teachers, or any individual teacher, do to earn a higher salary?
prostoalex's point is that hedge fund management varies greatly in its pay, while kingergarten teaching does not. If you want to "play the lottery", do the former. If not, do the latter. It's a free society.
And to your "next up": No. Luck != deserve. That is essentially my point, and the implicit point of the OP. A primitive society leaves all to luck. An advanced, mature, fair society does its best to eliminate chance (e.g. insurance, the root meaning of which is precisely that). The lottery is a patently backward thing (the opposite of insurance) and I'm appalled that our state governments perpetrate and profit from such harmful and exploitative things.