What do you OWN as a commodity when you have Ether?

Apologies for the dumbass question but apparently I've overlooked the absolutely fundamental concept of what you actually own when you own, say 3.047 ETH. It makes a lot more sense to me in the Bitcoin realm where you can think of it as owning digital gold and a means of currency.

However, since Ethereum is fundamentally achieving a different goal, I'm unclear on what you actually own. I was in a discussion with a crypto skeptic recently and kind of got stumped when the question came up, unfortunately. I was attempting to analogize is to owning oil whereas Bitcoin is like owning gold but wasn't thorough in explaining it enough to convert them to believing.

Do own the means to power Ether (and it's subtokens) on the Ethereum Blockchain? Or is more like owning a stock wherein you just own part of a business (in this case Blockchain)? Hoping to get a concise answer here rather than reading at length. Thanks!