"putting them to work" - what are you talking about? They are choosing jobs.

Im guessing that He is talking about "having job" being a poor abstraction for value creation from point of view of whole society. Its like triple A rating for CDOs backed by subprime morgages. On the surface it seems good but if You look close enough You will see only bullshit and wishful thinking.

I don't think your comparison holds. There is not whole society acting in concert, nor even in agreement about what is valuable. There are just individuals, some of whom band together into companies and other organisations, all with different priorities.

I believe that throughout history few golden rules emerged (most of them boil down to "do as You would be done") which keeps our societies more or less stable (we, or rather some of us, are still here, dont we?). Even those who abhore this rules most of the time keeps it to themselves. But if we as a society give individuals too much power then some of them will try to impose their own random ideas and values on us. This was happening with kings and feudal lords and this is happening now with some (if not all) of capitalistic roulette winners.

We're not giving power as a a society. We are rewarding people through a system who create value in that system.

If I can sell a billion people a widget for $2 that cost me $1 to make and ship, then I become a rich person without "society" being involved or "giving" anything.

The people who have generally perpetrated tragedies have been tied to government rather than commerce. Your examples are all governments or equivalent, and this is where your final analogy is inadequate, I think. The power balance is ultimately that any government at any time can ban any company.

Exactly. Thank you. Who is really doing the "choosing" here.