Have always felt stock buy-backs are equally terrible.
“We have all this money but we have no long term vision for how to grow the company. We’ll just keep doing what we’ve been doing prop up our share price instead”.
That's better than companies that have poor visions for growing the company where the money gets spent on projects that and don't generate an ROI for investors.
On a broader societal basis, it's often better for companies to stay in their lane, return profits to shareholders, and let shareholders invest in new companies with more growth potential.
“We have all this money but we have no long term vision for how to grow the company. We’ll just keep doing what we’ve been doing prop up our share price instead”.