Given how nowadays the payoff of a stock seems to just be from selling it later rather than having any direct correlation to the companies finances, it's all just a Ponzi scheme based on vibes.
> When was the payoff of a stock not from selling it later?
This is such a funny comment, historically you bought stocks to extract profits, ie dividends. Now you make money from houses and stocks by value appreciation instead of rent and dividends, you can see how that leads to very different behaviours and how that is not very stable compared to buying based on rent and dividends.