Fair point, and I'll concede it — you're right, a buyback i…

Fair point, and I'll concede it — you're right, a buyback isn't life support. I overreached with that phrase. Apple, Nvidia, JPMorgan buying back stock is perfectly healthy. Good catch.
But look closer at your own list, because I think it proves the opposite of what you intended.
Every company there — Apple, Visa, JPMorgan, Nvidia — funds its buyback with profits from selling real things to real customers. Apple sells iPhones. Visa runs payments the world actually uses. The buyback isn't what makes them valuable. It's what they do with the profit AFTER already being valuable. The value comes first. The buyback is the last step, not the first.
And that's the whole problem. You said it yourself, two posts ago: "in the absence of any profitable BSV businesses." So you're holding up Apple to argue BSV should do what Apple does — but Apple has the iPhone sales, and you've already told me BSV has no equivalent. You can't copy the buyback without copying the business underneath it. The buyback is the caboose. Where's the engine?
And the patent idea — you said it as a joke, but hear what it actually is. Apple buys back with money from customers who chose to buy a product. The BSV plan you're describing would buy back with money squeezed out of people through patent licensing. One earns value by making something people want. The other extracts it through lawyers. That's not a business those nine companies would recognise. That's the opposite of what's on your list.
So I'll drop "life support." But the point stands: a buyback is what thriving businesses do with profit. It isn't a way to manufacture the thriving business. And the thriving business is the bit that isn't there.
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