The problem is not buybacks, the problem is fiat money printing. Money printing means overly generous multi-billion government contracts given to big corporations, corporate debt schemes, institutions selling worthless toxic assets to reserve banks for high prices, Venture Capital schemes, …

Aside from tax implications (which is a problem with the tax system treating dividends and capital gains differently), buybacks have essentially the same effect as what would happen if the company distributed dividends to shareholders and then all shareholders used these dividends to buy more shares… It would be even more unequal because some investors would get a much better deal than others due to price increase caused by increase in demand and who placed their orders first.

Buybacks are just reinvestment by default. It doesn’t make sense to ban it anymore than it would make sense to ban the concept of investment altogether.