Agreed. Here's how I'd suggest reading this kind of article and thread: read it through while replacing the word "buyback" with "dividend", and see how 90% of the arguments fall away (or to be more charitable, become part of unrelated debates). A buyback is a roundabout way of paying a dividend, with the exact same effect (modulo capital gains tax, and I'm not talking about something like our b.s. subsidy of private equity services via the carried interest loophole, which is a creative way of paying a subsidy of dubious merit. What I mean here is, if companies were forced to pay dividends instead of buybacks, the superrich who can afford financial advisors would be organized enough to avoid paying, where as the middle class investor who is not playing with perfect strategy would pay a little more in capital gains, simply because it's hard to get the timing right unless you have billions of dollars at stake).
For example, a sentiment like:
"A history of buybacks has a positive long-term effect on stock prices, because investors like buybacks."
becomes
"A history of dividends has a positive long-term effect on stock prices, because investors like dividends."
At that point, you're left with the somewhat valid 10% of the argument: trading in the open market causes short term price moves. Is there is any evidence that the SEC is insufficiently vigilant against, say, any executives who exercise options around the buybacks? If so, that does constitute manipulation by the executives and negligence by the regulators! If not, the SEC is doing its job. The opinion piece makes Rule 10b-18 out to be some kind of backroom deal, whereas this is the SEC doing its job: clarifying the law with enough precision that everyone is playing by the same rules. The SEC is charged with making & reassessing these rules. For example, if they thought that 25% of ADV makes too much noise and is bad for the market, they can tweak the parameters.
Some reactions to other sentiments on this thread:
> I wish more big stocks... paid regular dividends instead of buybacks
Money is money. It doesn't matter whether you feel paid; it matters that a buyback does in fact pay you a dividend.
> This is orthogonal to worker pay
Bingo. This discussion is orthogonal to important questions of unequal opportunities or outcomes, or of redistribution, or the growth of intra-national inequality (while incidentally, things have become more equal inter-nation).