Fish, Loose and Fast

While reading my Property Law casebook, I came across this statement about property ownership that is contrary to most people's understanding of the people/environment relaitonship. I'm wondering what you think of it:

"We cannot have our fish both loose and fast. The common law gives preference to those who convince the world that they can catch the fish and hold it fast. This may be a reward to useful labor, but it is more precisely the articulation of a specific vocabulary within a structure of symbols understood by a commercial people. It is this commonly understood and shared set of symbols that gives significance and form to what might seem the quintessentially individualistic act: the claim that one has, by possession, separated for one's self property from the great commons of unowned things."

I gravitate toward cities and don't have much of a relationship with "the great common of unowned things," but I think it's a valid and interesting way of thinking about the world.

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