“I want to put a ding in the universe.” ~ Steve Jobs , American business magnate , entrepreneur, industrial designer , investor, and media proprietor . He was the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), and co-founder of Apple Inc. Jobs certainly followed through and made his “ding in the universe,” but how do you plan to create your ding?
Whether there be anything more profitable than hemp ? And whether there should not be great premiums for encouraging our hempen trade? What advantages may not Great Britain make of a country where land and labour are so cheap?
Whether it would not be more prudent, to strike out and exert ourselves in permitted branches of trade, than to fold our hands, and repine that we are not allowed the woollen?
Whether those specimens of our own manufacture, hung up in a certain public place, do not sufficiently declare such our ignorance? and whether for the honour of the nation they ought not to be removed?
Whether our linen-manufacture would not find the benefit of this institution? And whether there be anything that makes us fall short of the Dutch in damasks , diapers, and printed linen, but our ignorance in design?
Whether those same manufactures which England imports from other countries may not be admitted from Ireland? And, if so, whether lace, carpets, and tapestry, three considerable articles of English importation, might not find encouragement in Ireland? And whether an academy for design might not greatly conduce to the perfecting those manufactures among us?
Whether a people who had provided themselves with the necessaries of life in good plenty would not soon extend their industry to new arts and new branches of commerce?
Whether he whose luxury consumeth foreign products, and whose industry produceth nothing domestic to exchange for them, is not so far forth injurious to his country?
Whether such men would not all set themselves to work? Whether they would not subsist by the mutual participation of each other's industry? Whether, when one man had in his way procured more than he could consume, he would not exchange his superfluities to supply his wants? Whether this must not produce credit? Whether, to facilitate these conveyances, to record and circulate this credit,they would not soon agree on certain tallies, tokens, tickets, or counters?
Whether in order to understand the true nature of wealth and commerce, it would not be right to consider a ship's crew cast upon a desert island, and by degrees forming themselves to business and civil life, while industry begot credit, and credit moved to industry?
Whether the opinion of men, and their industry consequent thereupon, be not the true wealth of Holland and not the silver supposed to be deposited in the bank at Amsterdam ?
Whether it were not wrong to suppose land itself to be wealth? And whether the industry of the people is not first to be consider'd, as that which constitutes wealth, which makes even land and silver to be wealth, neither of which would have, any value but as means and motives to industry?
Whether to promote, transfer, and secure this commerce, and this property in human labour, or, in other words, this power, be not the sole means of enriching a people, and how far this may be done independently of gold and silver?
Whether it be not the opinion or will of the people, exciting them to industry, that truly enricheth a nation? And whether this doth not principally depend on the means for counting, transferring, and preserving power, that is, property of all kinds?