Another example is stock ownership, i.e. partial, tradeable ownership of a venture. No, you can't hold it in your hands[1], but people understand that it's property in all the relevant senses and can be meaningfully said to be "stolen" (e.g., if the votes you make with your shares are ignored).
[1] The stock certificate doesn't count; that's a representation of the property, not the property itself.
Wait, what? Most exchanges and corporations don't even go by a paper certificate, proving my point: shares (and money, for that matter), are defined by a relationship, not a physical instantiation. If you lose a certificate (if they even still issue them), there are still records of how many were issued, and of when they were transfered to you. As long as that history can be reconstructed, you are still given the voting/dividend rights, and if you aren't, it's lawsuit time.
Same thing with contracts: a contract is a relationship. The signed piece of paper is not the contract, but proof that a contract exists.
It's just a case of Procrustean bedding to act like all property (or rights bundles isomorphic thereto) must be physical.
> Most exchanges and corporations don't even go by a paper certificate,
Except the ones that do. You're right; most don't by default, but if you DO have valid paper certificate, it is a bearer instrument. Who owns it, owns it.
Which is to say, that the physical piece of paper is not a defining characteristic of property in stocks (even one case would mean that paper is not inherently part of stock ownership), just as physical stuff is not necessary in many other kinds of property.
It certainly is "a tiny piece of the company", at an appropriate level of abstraction. Expand it out to something more specific and you get that it's "right to cast a certain number of votes in determining who is allowed to manage (act as steward of) the company's assets and other major decisions, and to some proportion of the money paid out as dividends or when the company is bought out".
Somebody who owns their own company can be thought of as equivalently having 100% of its stock.
Don't see what's "a scam" about it, but I'd love to hear your thorough analysis on the matter.
[1] The stock certificate doesn't count; that's a representation of the property, not the property itself.