A very large percentage of free resources are being hoarded in wealth and cash piles, would you actually claim a company like Apple is directing all of it's free resources to making better products? Why the stock buybacks and 200 billion pile?
It's a mistake to think of money as resources--as if money is something we dig out of the ground and need in order to make our machines run. No-one eats cash. Whatever could be done if Apple spent its cash, could be done if Apple didn't spend its cash. Money's only purpose is to incentivize people to do things, so you're basically asking Apple to play king and start directing society. I'd prefer they just sit on their money rather than that!
That's capital. It gets given back to investors, who invest it elsewhere. They don't just stick it under the mattress. It is moved from Apple to a place where it can be put to use. With a buyback (or dividend) apple is saying "we ran out of productive ways to spend this money"
Even if they did just keep a few billion dollars of physical cash in a vault somewhere, that would just increase the purchasing power of the remainder. The total value of all currency in circulation (all forms combined) tends toward the total value of all of the goods available for purchase.
Taking money out of circulation is a bit like making a loan to everyone in proportion to the amount of currency they hold; when you do decide to put it back into circulation, that increase in value (deflation) represents the interest you receive on the loan.
