> Why do you put "investors" in scare quotes?
Business 101 - the Assets of a company.
Machines: anything that enable the production of deliverables and thus, value.
Materials: raw materials (obviously), applicable for traditional industries. Solar and wind farms could qualify in the tech sector, tough.
Money: can also be shares owned, debts that others owe you, or future revenue.
Men: engineers, technicians - everyone that makes the company a business that makes money, and everything they know, including the company's past struggles so they don't repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
Being an investor implies that the people doing the investments have an actual knowledge not only of the current revenue sources of a business, but also its past history and its future potential, to be able to extract the maximum value from its operations.
Being an investor implies that there is a minimum amount of trust in what employees do, security in their past experiences as employees so that future mistakes can be avoided or mitigated, and faith in their future potential.
People who see employees only as expenses or numbers to be deducted from quarterly profits along with benefits, insurance, social security and other normal operational costs of the operation of a company do not deserve to be called investors for they have no plans for the future of a company and no interest either in the work of the employees or their success.
If they see a company only as a set of numbers and only focus on their returns, they fail to see the history, the potential and the future impact of that company. Thus they are more like vultures picking a rotten carcass than investors.
I'm done.