Some do, Apple is notable for this. If Uber’s done one I missed it.

FTX burns FTT when they have a good quarter, with roughly the same zero accountability to do so as a FAANG with a God Emperor CEO running a dual-class share structure.

Neither of these things are backed by guys with guns who come to your house if you fail to pay taxes in them.

A failing business is still a business. 60% of new restaurants fail within a year, but nobody would argue that these restaurants have no intrinsic value. Likewise, Uber has facilitated billions of rides.

A better comparison would have been national currency.

A piece of paper has no intrinsic value, pays no dividend, and gets diluted over time.

Still not the same. Every fiat currency that isn't effectively useless facilitates far more trade than its face value.

Current USD M2 monetary velocity is barely above 1, which is far from "far more".

Very difficult to opt out of using it.

Unless they go under, then the money is just gone.

Buybacks? If you're running a company profitably you're supposed to invest your cash to expand the business, not inflate the share price. The share price is supposed to be a reflection of your future profitability, not your future buyback schemes.

Buybacks are optimal when your share price is undervalued or when the Business has plateaued, which is commonly done for value stocks. In which case Buybacks becomes the best way to return value to share holders by purchasing under valued shares of themselves, trading their excess capital to reduce the supply of company shares that also improves dividend yield given its paid out to fewer outstanding shares.

It's the optimal way to return value to share holders when your share price is undervalued and you have excess capital. If the company ever needs to raise funds for a strategic M&A investment in the future they're always able to resell their shares again.

Some companies are content with maintaining a healthy business and not go after growth at all costs, which is a totally fine operating strategy.

If the company does not share its profits in any way with the shareholders, then I agree that it's not different from crypto. The thing is that usually there's an expectation that you will start paying out to your shareholders eventually. There are also companies that already pay out dividends - you can always invest only in those to dodge the "greater fool" problem, at least partially.

You're giving the earnings back to investors because you don't have anything to invest them in yourself. Just like you're supposed to.

It's just that you're just doing it through a buyback rather than a dividend because dividends in the US are taxed like plain-old income and buybacks turn into capital gains and are taxed less.

So you're opposed to dividends as well?