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If you measure 'profit' as 'how much does the net worth of our owners go up', stock buybacks make a lot of sense.

This seems like a particularly terrible measure of success for everyone but those owners.

This is too circular. Profit is just revenue - cost. The stock values depend on current and future risk adjusted profit.

In theory. In practice the stock prices of many large companies seems to be completely decoupled from any thing even resembling economic reality.

Does anyone really think Tesla is worth more than every single other automaker combined? That’s what the stock price (market cap) is saying.