I'm quite lucky in this regard. The federal employees' equivalent of the 401k is the TSP, which has a .029% expense ratio on its equity funds (S&P 500, Wilshire 4500, EAFE). And we also have administrators who took steps to keep idiotic daytrader-type fed employees from driving up costs for everybody else, by limiting the number of monthly transactions people can make into and out of our equity funds.
When I see expense ratios like those offered by my wife's employer -- who uses Northwest Mutual (they charge 0.99% + the selected fund's expense ratio, and until recently had no Vanguard offerings; now they do, so the Vanguard S&P 500 index costs my wife 1.04%) -- I shudder to think of all the money lost to the parasitic brokerages out there.
Last I looked, the industry average was around 1.3% for large cap funds, and 1.5% for small cap funds. I ran the math on what a $100,000 investment, at 7% over 30 years, would yield net of fees.
Fee = 0%, balance: $761,226
Fee= 1.3%, balance: $527,533 (that's $233,693 to "the house")
Fee = 1.5%, balance: $498,395 (that's $262,831 in the brokerage's pockets)
Fee = .05%, balance: $750,626 ($10,600 in fees over 30 years)
Fee = .029%, balance: $754,848 (only $6,378 in fees over a 30-year span)
Crazy stuff.