It's about greedy, selfish, exploitation of the land and of workers by a capitalist landowner. He is materially rich because of his property but in truth he does not own what he has got because it is the land/mine and its workers that have provided him with it. Moreover he is spiritually and morally unfulfilled/unhappy. Money cannot buy that.
By extension it is about our relationship with natural resources (there is a strong environmentalist bent to the final verse) and with one another as a society (the 500 men with axes and the fishermen clearly have a greater claim to what they dig and catch than does the person who claims legal ownership of the land).
It's about greedy, selfish, exploitation of the land and of workers by a capitalist landowner. He is materially rich because of his property but in truth he does not own what he has got because it is the land/mine and its workers that have provided him with it. Moreover he is spiritually and morally unfulfilled/unhappy. Money cannot buy that.
By extension it is about our relationship with natural resources (there is a strong environmentalist bent to the final verse) and with one another as a society (the 500 men with axes and the fishermen clearly have a greater claim to what they dig and catch than does the person who claims legal ownership of the land).