> Fundamentally this is the corporation saying it doesn't have a market-beating way to reinvest this capital, and it's giving the money back to its owners to more productively invest.

Before tech companies demonstrated the principle of infinite growth, the purpose of a company was to generate revenue (paid as dividends) for its shareholders.

So much growth hasn't really been possible before.

If a company can keep growing and investing infinitely, one might argue that it's time for the DOJ / FTC to step in and stop them from eating the entire business sector. That's the sign of a monopoly pushing into every market like an invasive species and making the existing businesses in those markets go extinct. Kind of like how tech companies are now movie companies, music companies, game companies, pharmaceuticals, grocery stores...