[cbsmith]

The bigger question is: "how would one identify said funds?".

The economic game theory around hedge funds is not pretty. By the very nature of the markets, if one really could consistently beat the market, it would be extremely rare and valuable skill, so you could charge fees for that service that would cover nearly all of the difference between your performance and market performance. Similarly, if you could identify funds that consistently would beat the market, you'd effectively be one of the people who could consistently beat the market. This means that pretty much all investors putting money in hedge funds can't really distinguish between the funds that consistently outperform the market and those that don't. They consequently have to rely on proxy signals. For the above reasons, one of those signals is... the fees. So, if you are running a hedge fund and you wish to convince investors that you can consistently beat the market, you should charge fees exactly as if you do consistently beat the market. If you don't, that raises a question in investors' minds as to why you don't charge fees commensurate with the service you are providing.

The end result is that a potential investor in hedge funds is faced with a bevy of difficult to distinguish choices, a small number of which might actually be able to consistently beat the market, but charge fees that eat up almost all of the difference in performance. The rest charge fees that would eat up almost all of the difference in performance if they did perform that well, but instead will perform worse overall, and consequently lose the investor far more money than if they just put their money into an index fund.