Here’s a bit of news guaranteed to help you to get in touch with your inner Marxist: The top 20 hedge fund and private-equity fund managers pocketed an average $657.5 million in 2006, according to a recent study.

On one hand, that’s a matter for the people who invest in hedge funds to deal with. It’s none of my affair. After all, it’s the investors’ money and the fund manager is their hired hand. If I gave a guy a thousand dollars and he turned it into a million within a few months, I probably wouldn’t mind if he wanted to keep $900,000 of it for his trouble — considering I’m not smart enough to get a hundred-fold increase on my own. On the other hand, if a torch-wielding mob of peasants stormed his mansion and made off with his loot, I wouldn’t mind that, either. The greedy bastard would deserve it.

I suspect most Americans would agree with this viewpoint — especially that mob-of-peasants scenario.

The thing I don’t understand about executive compensation in general is why the laws of supply and demand apparently don’t apply. It’s not as if there are only a tiny handful of business executives capable of running a corporation, and that shareholders have to bid up their wages in order to attract them. In fact, I’d bet that almost every corporation has a very deep bench, to put it in sports terminology. There are surely a dozen people at each company who could do what the top guy does. Has anybody ever thought to say, “You know, that fellow Epstein in the Asian-markets office seems like a bright lad. Why don’t we give him a crack at the job for, say, $10 million?”

I suspect young Epstein would lunge at that offer like Paris Hilton goes after a photo op.

When you think about it, the only jobs in which compensation is truly and directly tied to performance tend to be in sports. If you’re driving in 100 runs a year for a baseball team, you collect a nice paycheck. Drop to 50 runs a year, and Epstein will be playing in your place and tipping you to detail his car. A fund manager has a bad year and, “Hey, it’s the market. You got your ups, you got your downs, it’s just the business cycle. Tell you what, make it $500 million this year and we’ll call it good.”

Don’t think it actually happens that way? According to this 2006 news article, one hedge fund manager took home $350 million in annual pay even though his flagship fund only returned 3.4 percent for two consecutive years. I’m getting more than that in my bank savings account.

Tell you what. Send me your money, I’ll park it in my account and guarantee you 4 percent. You pay me — aw, hell, I’ll do it for $100 million because I’m a generous guy  — and we’ll call it good. I’ll even deal with the looting peasants on my own dime.

Attention, class. Today’s conundrum comes to us from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where at the end of every summer a temporary city springs up to celebrate free expression. Extra credit will be given to the first person who can solve this riddle of logic: How can you be charged with arson for setting something on fire that was specifically designed to be burned?

There’s a second conundrum to also chew on, but we’ll get to that one in a moment.

These riddles originate with the 2007 edition of Burning Man, the annual festival in the desert that celebrates “radical self-expression.” The event started in 1986 as a gathering of fewer than two dozen people on a San Francisco beach, where an eight-foot tall wooden figure was burned. A few years later it moved to the desert, where attendance exploded. This year, about 40,000 people are expected to join the festivities, which conclude this weekend with the burning of the trademark stick figure — which, like the crowds, has itself grown, to 40 feet.

For a while, a trip to Burning Man was on my list of Things To Do Before I Die, somewhere between a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon and pouring a beer on Barry Bonds’ head when he goes to the outfield wall to catch a fly ball. But my enchantment with the festival faded when I realized that it apparently had gone the way of all such events that start as exercises in freewheeling anarchy and eventually give way to rules, regulations and hierarchies.

Apparently, that disenchantment is shared by some Burning Man old-timers. Two days ago, a fellow was arrested at this year’s festival and charged with arson after the 40-foot centerpiece was set ablaze several days early. The first conundrum revealed itself as I read a news report on the incident. How can it be considered arson when the figure was created with arson in mind? I can see criminal mischief, maybe, or vandalism. But arson? Surely I can’t be the only person whose circuit board of reason and logic overheats while processing this information.

One web site reports that the man arrested for the, uh, “crime” is a long-time burner (as festival-goers call themselves) “and one heck of a loose cannon.” In other words, he sounds exactly like the sort of person the Burning Man festival was created to serve: anti-authoritarian, non-mainstream and prone to impulsive acts of defiance. Which brings me to my second conundrum:

How can the organizers of a festival devoted to radical self-expression condemn a participant who expresses himself in the most flagrantly radical way possible? That’s something The Man would do– establish rules and timetables, and then get all huffy when somebody decides to light the fire now rather than later.

Good thing the Burning Man organizers don’t also run the ballpark. Otherwise I might find out there’s a designated inning for pouring a drink on Barry Bonds’ head, and that only premium beer is allowed.

For journalists, the Duke lacrosse case is the gift that keeps on giving. For the justice system, though, it’s a virus that apparently can’t be contained.

The latest twist in this saga that had us gaga for over a year is that a special committee formed to investigate the Durham police department’s handling of the case has stopped its work. The reason? Durham officials fear that lawyers representing the three former defendants will use the committee’s findings to beat even more money out of the city than they almost surely could get now.

The problem with the lacrosse case is that we’re past the point where it’s simply about justice for the three Duke students victimized by the investigation. The legal  system itself is now the focus. Those young men endured a horrible ordeal, but that’s what they did: They endured it. They’re on the other side of the nightmare now, and from the comfort of my armchair it seems that they’ve been made whole again – at least as far as their reputations and the public’s perception of them is concerned. Yes, it’s appropriate for them to expect that their families’ legal costs will be recovered, but are they owed something more than that?

Maybe — unless it’s a pound of flesh they want.

And that seems to be the case, judging by the heavyweight legal talent the former defendants brought on board after the criminal case was concluded. If so, then I have now arrived at the natural end of my sympathy for the three young men. To repeat: This is not about you anymore, fellas. The city of Durham has a need and duty to find out what went wrong within its police department. Its responsibility is now to the future targets of criminal investigations more so than to past targets. By making it difficult for Durham city leaders to do some much-needed soul-searching, the three lacrosse players risk undermining the wave of goodwill that has buoyed them in these recent months.

Then again, that’s been the hallmark of the Duke lacrosse case all along. Public opinion has swung wildly at different points, never developing a reasoned equilibrium. This would be a good moment for the pendulum of opinion to settle into a small, gentle arc. The defendants were cleared and lionized for their fortitude, the rogue prosecutor driven from office and disbarred, the accuser shown for the unstable, pitiable soul she is, and — if the special committee is allowed to complete its work — incompetent police investigators will be identified, then disciplined or fired.

I have some advice for the three former defendants: Ask for compensation for your legal fees, then walk away from this mess and get on with your lives. Any victory from this point forward will only be pyrrhic.