I think he seems to explain that in the situation that you had presented between multiple different countries, every other country doesn't even give you the freedom/opportunity to be the powerful person without requiring some same set of ideologies (communism good, or the NK example)
Whereas, in a capitalist system with no matter how much of its flaws, as long as you can produce value (whatever that is in current society), you have power and can actually be your own boss in that sense.
I am worried how much of that can change in recent year but still, I feel like socialism can be good for generating extreme amounts of money /value because as a society on whole, people are willing to take on more risks if there is something to fall back on (like not having to worry that you or your family will starve if you fail)
Everyone has at least some power in every situation. Even actual slave owners couldn't force their slaves to work - they just could (and did) kill them if they refused.
What you say about capitalism could work if capitalism rewarded creating value, but capitalism actually rewards taking money, and pro-capitalist theory says that's strongly coupled to creating value, but in reality we observe that it's actually very weakly coupled. If we allow alternative definitions of value (like the common "value = whatever brings money") then we could say the same thing about totalitarian dictatorship - in that system, value is defined as whatever the dictator likes, and if you create that, you are rewarded just like in capitalism.
It's not true that in capitalism you don't need a certain ideology to become powerful. You do need one - profit above all else, bribes are okay if you can get away with them, each person's moral value is solely determined by their net worth, that sort of thing. If you don't think that way, you won't become powerful in capitalism. (Well, occasionally it happens by luck, but that's true in any system, and if you didn't have the skill to deliberately seek power, you also don't have the skill to hold onto it. See Notch or the average lottery winner.)
The ideology you need to become powerful in a system usually isn't the one it says on the tin. Believing in God in a theocracy doesn't make you powerful, just average. Believing you're God's chosen prophet might make you powerful; but more likely is believing the whole God thing is a scam and it's really a dictatorship, so you suck up to the guy at the top while publicly praising God. In USSR, believing you're helping create a communist utopia doesn't make you powerful, just average (and more delusional than average). More likely to make you powerful in the USSR is believing that it's useful for the plebs to believe they're creating a communist utopia and they deserve for you to steal all their wealth because they're so stupid for believing that nonsense. You don't get powerful in feudalism by believing the king is chosen by God; you're more likely to get powerful in feudalism by believing that if you murder the king you might get to be the new king. The Gervais Principle applies to more than just corporations.
I avoid the word "socialism" because in practice it can be substituted by "something that isn't capitalism" and different people don't agree on what, specifically, that thing is.
