Not sure if linked the right article:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/your-money/how-many-mut...
But I want to comment on that. The article makes it seem like mutual fund managers provide no benefit whatsoever because they did not beat the market.
Bullshit. They might not help investors make money, but they still provide benefits. Saying otherwise like saying Apple and Google and Microsoft provide no benefit because they have not done any better than the tech sector as a whole. In fact, we can look at the growth of the market as a measure of how well mutual fund managers are investing.
We need to remember, mutual fund managers compete with other mutual fund managers. They're investments do matter as they dictate where investment money in our economy goes. They might not make money relative to the market as a whole, but they still provide important benefits to society.
For example, just because airlines only make .2% profits, their services benefit society tremendously.
Replacing mutual fund managers with investing in any company whatsoever (though limiting to public companies changes things) by "flipping a coin" like the article suggests, would likely have a very bad impact on the economy. It would have no effect on how well mutual fund managers do relative to the market, though.