What we actually see is a system of chartered extraction. Corporate executives are like Norman lords, granted their 'title' (CEO of instead of Earl of) by shareholders (rather than a king) in return for which both are/were expected to extract maximum value by any means necessary. Extractive tactics often at the expense of long-term product strength are behaviors shareholders expect if the CEO is to keep their bestowed 'title'.
Don't forget the progenitor joint stock company The East India Company, Capitalism in it's purest form without government restriction. Profit-maximizing, absentee extraction, with company executives serving as quasi-feudal lords over assets and people. Modern corporate capitalism is hard to distinguish, in its structure,history, behavior, and incentives, from the Norman extraction system, it's just dressed in a more politically palatable wrapper and forced to mellow out from it's desired East India Company style final form.
Well in some perverse sense, I'd say Meta qualifies here. Zuck isn't beholden to other shareholders and is free to burn truckloads of money on worthless projects. The big asterisk is that for Meta, "improving its product" is effectively "creating the best digital cigarettes".
And that still does not make stock the product.
And I say "or whatever the fuck" because, as you point out, it's not really capitalism. And maybe it never was - after all, the US Golden Era was when we had the most central planning, the most social services, and the highest taxes.
But everybody right now is exploiting one teensy little flaw of the economy - humans don't live very long. There's no reason to make stuff good for later when you can take a cash advance and get rich now. Everything is always someone else's problem.
I think one fun case study is superstar CEOs. They're so highly desirable, and they work 5 years at a company and "turn it around" before moving onto the next. But if you look at the company after they leave, it's in shambles. And yet, they are the most sought after CEOs. You don't want the Arizona Green Tea guy, no, you want the guy who ran Chipotle into the ground. But hey, at least he increased their stock price for, like, a little bit.
Capitalism outside regulatory capture looks like the East India company. You are basically giving me 'no REAL communism has ever been tried'.
