The purpose for who? When you run the company you yourself own, it hardly matters whether you are rewarded through salary, a dividend or stock appreciation, an

The purpose for who? When you run the company you yourself own, it hardly matters whether you are rewarded through salary, a dividend or stock appreciation, and presumably you care a lot about the actual product and not just about making money. When you invest in a company you are not otherwise involved in, on the other hand, there's just no point to it unless you get back more than your initial investment, so either the company must grow or at the very least if it doesn't, it should be reliably profitable and share those profits with shareholders. Same thing when you lend out money. This isn't rent seeking: capital is crucial to any business and to provide it is to provide a valuable service. Which is not to say that there's not a lot of rent-seeking behavior in the stock market, or that modern capitalism is entirely sane, but that's a different topic.