What will it take for all the pension funds within the corporate and public sectors to wake up and smell the coffee? As dutiful taxpayers, shouldn't we at least have the right to tell the public pension funds to stop investing our money in these high-cost, under-performing hedge funds and instead invest that money in simple low-cost index funds?

Seems to me that the pension fund managers and the hedge funds (as well as with the mutual funds & private equity funds) are a bit too chummy with each other. This is understandable as many pension fund managers used to work at hedge/mutual/private equity funds and vice versa, but it is an obvious conflict of interest that is doing a great disservice to the general public. Having pension funds invest in low-cost index funds of domestic/foreign equities and bonds would seem like a cheaper way to generate returns, especially considering how "the Bet" has shown that hedge funds rarely outperform, especially once you net their costly fees.