It's not silly, it's a terrible incentive for companies flush with cash and paying bonuses to their executives in stocks, it becomes very easy to manipulate the stock price with stock buybacks for a larger bonus while letting the company flailing with underinvestment (or simply missed investments).

A great case to see the absurdity of it is Intel, doing stock buybacks for almost a decade to push its stock price up while flailing around and losing its edge, if it was paying high dividends while flailing around then major shareholders would be asking why the fuck would they be paying dividends while the business is losing competitiveness but by doing stock buybacks it kept investors "happy" so they could jump ship and let the company fail on its own.

Stock buybacks have perverse incentives, everyone responsible for keeping the company in check gets a fat paycheck from buybacks: executives, major investors, etc., all financed by sucking the coffers dry. The buybacks at Intel just made the company as a whole lose money, they bought back stocks when they were high and it only dipped since then (10y window).