Intelligence doesn't mean you deserve anything ..
A big part of success is simply if people enjoy working with you or not.
Also I would say that being able to recognize and sign talent - is itself a talent.
I didn't say it did. The examples I gave were both of people who were highly intelligent, AND worked hard for years, Franklin, and Szymon respectively. I didn't say people should get paid for being intelligent, It's just that they frequently work very hard, and get paid a fraction of what people who don't work hard and were far less talented get paid. That's commonly excused away with rationalizations about how if someone is wealthy, there must be a good reason for that, they deserve more for an hour of their time than someone else does for 1000 hours. Sometimes that's true. Most wealth in all societies throughout history is handed down generation to generation though, and that's one of many places where this logic falls apart completely. No person deserves to be treated better or worse, based on things they had no control over. We do it all the time though, and excuse our behavior with nonsense phrases like "that's the way the cookie crumbles". Would you have respected Ben Franklin if he saw those lightning strikes and just shrugged and said "Whatever dude"?
Being able to recognize talent is sort of a talent. You know which books you read are good right? So why aren't you in charge of all the authors? Because without money, no one considers "knowing what you like" to be a valuable commodity. Being able to sign talent is not in and of itself a talent, that's wrong. Any moron with a million dollars can sign someone, and the most talented person on the planet with 0 dollars can't sign anyone. Compare that with actual talent, which can exist with or without money, and you'll see the difference. Who is the better writer, Aaron Sorkin or Lil Wayne? If you go by money, Lil Wayne is the better author.
Money is not talent, but people conflate it, and it results in people with very meager skills, such as knowing what music sounds good, being rewarded more than the actual creators, who must solve problems 1000s of times more complex.
I got onto this particular rant due to a phone call from last evening. I was talking with one of my friends, and we were discussing how difficult it is to get our work out there, something that you should be familiar with.
He was telling me about how rich his parents were, and I asked how it happened. He said that 30 years ago or so, some politicians had made some promises that if elected, they would make the economy better for farmers. Eric's parents had inherited about 900 acres of farmland. This program had the bright idea of paying people with land to not farm it, artificially inflating the value of land that was being farmed. So his parents signed up for the program, and for decades they have been receiving checks for not farming the land.
They are worth about 16 million dollars now. Neither one of them has done any work in 30 years, and they get paid more than 20x the average local full time salary, for NOT doing anything. Just sitting there. So I do feel like Szymon (the classical composer I posted above) gets the short end of the stick, working as hard as he can and getting ground into the dirt for his efforts, while people that don't work, aren't smart, and contribute nothing to the world are soaking up millions. But perhaps they are just very "talented" at inheriting farmland.
As far as success being a reflection on how much people enjoy working with you, I think that sounds right, but isn't correct in practicality. One of the main guys at SP had to leave recently. We were really good friends, and had a great time hanging out together, building, writing, composing, creating. It was everything he wanted to do in life. But he started running short on rent money, and he had to quit. He told me later that he had gone to work for a guy who had him running a dimmer switch for a stage. But that guy had a bar that his father had bought for him, and so was able to pay my friend enough to make rent. I don't blame him for leaving, I'm just saying that your point doesn't necessarily hold up under scrutiny.
In addition, I've seen both sides of this. I was worth several million in my early 20's. Before I invented a technology, I had lived in poverty. And I had plenty of friends, maybe 20. After I started making 25k a month though, that 20 turned into 400. Girls at parties would just run up to me and ask me if I wanted to go somewhere, no pickup line required. Here's the thing though, I was exactly the same person. The money was the only thing that had changed, but suddenly, everyone thought I was amazing. Once at a party a group of people was crowded around me, and several people I had never even met got into a fight about who could talk to me. It was surreal. I stopped the fight, and asked them. "You seem to be really excited about talking to me, why? What do I do here? Why am I rich? How did I accomplish this. The first one of you that can answer, you can hang out with me for the rest of the night." Nobody knew. They had no idea why they wanted to talk to me, they just knew I had money, and was therefore better than everyone else. How stupid can you get. I had security throw the entire group out, and told them fighting wasn't allowed in my building.
Obviously, I'm a bit prone to angry ranting. I'm a bit surprised to see you jump to Khaled's defense though. You personally have displayed more talent than he ever did. I mean, in your recent film, you were smart enough not to jump in front of the camera and start yelling your own name into the lens. Do you think it's right that he gets literally 100's of times the opportunities you get, even though you could likely run circles around him if you had a fraction of his funding?