>Making something people want, charging them money for it, and earning a steady profit for a long time should be seen as a successful business.

Yes. But it can only be counted as a success if your profits allow you to reduce your debt. Manufacturing goods can be quite capital intensive, which is why companies often have to take on debt to make things.

>pump up the stock price and enrich the current shareholders.

The problem here is that doing anything else as a publicly traded company is illegal. But also consider that shareholders loose everything they invested if the stock price goes to zero.

>We used to call the latter a Ponzi scheme and put people in prison for it.

That is not a Ponzi scheme.