Dividends are an interesting topic. There are sort of two ways to view the stock market - one is as a loan with a very drawn out repayment schedule that may be amicably adjusted for the health of the company (that one relies on two repayment strategies, dividends, buybacks and acquisitions). Once a company has issued stock the only two real reasons to care about the value is for the utility as a valuation tool which has steeply fallen off with indepth audits becoming the norm and, of course, further stock issuance - a healthy share price allows less dilution for further issuance. The other view of the stock market is just pure gambling - if you take away the disbursements and shareholder voting control then all that's left is the valuation which we can do better in different ways (and stock price is often disregarded when considering loans and M&A except when the difference can be arbitraged).

Really, it's kind of all meaningless BS, but as long as most people believe it isn't then it's a great way to grow assets by doing nothing which is an activity that we apparently want to encourage?