Another way of thinking about this is marginal value. Imagine a world where person X has a heart attack and the next best person qualified to do their job steps

Another way of thinking about this is marginal value. Imagine a world where person X has a heart attack and the next best person qualified to do their job steps in and paid their wage demands. The fall in social benefits less change in wages is their marginal contribution. For Einstein, this is presumably astronomical. For the best primary school teachers this will also be high (it might be low/negative for some of the worst). These are not directly relevant to the question of whether the quant traders have a positive marginal contribution to society.