So, I&#x27;ll admit that I don&#x27;t understand the details of how vanguard is paying employees or the external people that actually manage the money, but presumably, they pay a fixed fee to someone to manage the money, and that fee is significant (but not a significant fraction of the money under investment).  The fact that &quot;normal&quot; in investment funds is percentage of money under investment plus percentage of the profit shouldn&#x27;t matter since they&#x27;ve found a way to run a company that doesn&#x27;t need to pay those fees to get the money invested.<p>edit: I should add, that I&#x27;m fairly certain that the employees at vanguard are in fact getting paid.<p>edit2: So the question is should we look at whether the employees&#x2F;contractors at vanguard are getting paid market rate, or whether vanguard as a whole is charging market rate to the investors.  My comparison to the hospital co-op was  that it&#x27;s unfair to compare apples-to-orangutans.