If stock buybacks are Capital’s path of least resistance it will self organize, like iron shavings to a neodymium magnet, and make it happen. There is no human agency in the circuits of capitalism and never will be.

If this woman tried to not do stock buybacks, she would be fired by her peers/board and replaced.

If this woman was even capable of considering doing pay raises instead of stock buybacks, she would have been clocked and removed from the circuit like an intelligent species crashing into the fermi paradox/great filter.

Stock buy backs used to be illegal in the USA. It was seen as a form of corruption.