Not just that, but if it were "fractional ownership in a business" then every profitable company would pay a dividend. Now it has become normalized to not do such a thing with all sorts of fancy reasoning.
Share repurchases are also a way of returning cash-flow to owners. A stock buyback is equivalent to a dividend, just with automatic reinvestment in the default 'do-nothing' case.
Including buybacks, few large and mature companies fail to return profits to shareholders at all, and we'd ordinarily want growing or startup companies to retain earnings and invest.
You are just reciting the "fancy reasoning" that I already mentioned. All the esoteric stuff is designed to do is concentrate the wealth into the hands of the wealthy. It is a step away from fractional ownership.
There is nothing fancy about it. The reasoning is straight forward and has the exact same impact that paying dividends has, from the perspective of the shareholder. (Well, actually in some ways maybe a better impact, as it makes complying with idiotic tax laws easier)
