What a bizarre kind of possessiveness. Companies don't own their employees. Slavery is supposed to have ended quite some time ago (yes, I know it still exists).
If you want to hire someone, hire them. If an employee leaves, let them leave. No hard feelings. If you really don't want them to leave, offer them more. Preferably do that before they think about leaving. This sort of unfair limitations on employee's employability is or should be illegal.
I feel like that is not the point though. The analogy he made was fairly reasonable: people have fairly demanding (sometimes irrational) restrictions on who they decide to keep in their lives as friends. This is about that. Not about slavery. Not about mismanagement of a company.
If you want to hire someone, hire them. If an employee leaves, let them leave. No hard feelings. If you really don't want them to leave, offer them more. Preferably do that before they think about leaving. This sort of unfair limitations on employee's employability is or should be illegal.