The post-IPO market is the only thing that gives the IPO market any value. Hope of an IPO has encouraged countless people to build things. I have a hard time believing investing has been a net negative to creation at all. If anything, it has increased the incentives in the system.

Post-IPO investing is essential to the IPO which is essential to VC which is essential to startups.

I disagree.

The pricing of post-IPO stocks is responsible for trillions of dollars of capital allocation, since the amount that public companies can raise is linearly proportional to the stock price.

It's not an unimportant problem to get right, unless you think it doesn't matter whether billions of dollars get allocated to GME versus MRNA.

A clown show where GME gets all the funding (due to its high stock price) and real companies don't is not going to lead to a productive and healthy economy.

I know what you mean but this notion of buy and holding index was perhaps a mirage. It’s all theoretical and cynical side of me thinks it was “invented” as a way to appropriate pension and retirement funds into Wall Street machination.

How do you think VCs are getting rich? IPOs and transactions are more profitable than building companies with sustainable business models (by definition, it is usually cheaper to buy a bad company, attempt to flip it in the capital cycle than buy a good company which is likely expensive/impossible to buy).