George Monbiot once said that I claimed to have invented the word ‘privatization.’ Nothing could be further from the truth, in common with many (if not most) of George’s claims. I have gone on record several times to point out that the word was in use before I was even born, which in my case is a very long time indeed. I did say that I preferred to spell it with a ‘z’ rather than an ‘s,’ as is do with most ‘ize’ endings.

The word privatization, specifically the gerund ‘privatizing,’ first appeared in English in April 1923 in the New York Times. It was used within quotation marks in a translation of a German speech regarding the potential for American companies to purchase German state railroads.

While that was the first recorded instance of the word itself, its development as a technical term followed a more complex path. The term is a calque of the German word Privatisierung, which has been used since at least the 19th century. In the mid-1930s, The Economist used the term "reprivatization" (from German Reprivatisierung) to describe Nazi Germany's policy of selling off state-owned banks and industries.

An early cited example comes from an article in the Miami Herald (April 28, 1924): "Hugo Stinnes repeatedly demanded the privatization of the railroads, alleging that they could never function satisfactorily and profitably under bureaucratic administration."

The noun "privatization" appeared in academic works such as the Economic Journal in 1942 and Maxine Yaple Sweezy’s ‘The Structure of the Nazi Economy’ (1941).

The term reprivatization, again translated directly from German Reprivatisierung, was used frequently in the mid-1930s as The Economist reported on Nazi Germany's sale of nationalized banks back to public shareholders following the 1931 economic crisis. These sales covered steel, mining, banking, shipyards, shipping lines, and railways, sectors that had been nationalized in the early 1930s owing to the economic crisis.

The origin of the term is often wrongly attributed to Peter Drucker's 1969 book, ‘The Age of Discontinuity,’ but Germà Bel demonstrated in a 2006 Journal of Economic Perspectives article that this attribution is incorrect, and that the terminology had been evolving in German economic policy since the 1930s.

The word became common in the late 1970s and early 1980s as part of UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's economic policies, drawing on the work of MP David Howell, who was himself influenced by Drucker. So, in short, born in German economic thought, first appearing in English newspapers in the 1920s as a translation, developed in coverage of 1930s Germany, and only becoming a mainstream English word about 50 years later under Thatcher.

The word entered common public currency when it was adopted by Margaret Thatcher’s government in the UK. It was reportedly used in an interview with the Financial Times on 28 July 1979 by Nigel Lawson, then Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

No, George, not guilty. Though I did help popularize the word, preferring it to denationalization, which implied going back. I preferred a word that looked new, going forward.

Madsen Pirie

Supporters of foreign aid criticize governments for devoting too little of their budget to sending aid to poorer countries. Yet monies sent by private individuals, usually to their families back home, dwarf those sent by governments. Such remittances are more than three times as large as total global foreign aid. In 2021, $780 billion was sent to 800 million people, while foreign aid totalled $200 billion.

By total volume, the United States leads by a wide margin, with migrants sending an estimated $103 billion abroad in 2024. Saudi Arabia ranks second at $47 billion, followed by Switzerland at $40 billion, and Germany at $24 billion.

The US figure is enormous partly because it has a huge population and economy. A different figure is remittances as a share of national wealth, and by that measure, the Gulf states are the standout story. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait have relatively small citizen populations but host millions of migrant workers who collectively send staggering proportions of those countries' economic output abroad.  

Since 2015, remittances have been the largest source of external finance flows to low- and middle-income countries, surpassing official development assistance in every World Bank estimate since 2000, and exceeding foreign direct investment flows to those countries by more than $270 billion in 2023.  

The conventional rankings of ‘generous donor nations,’ which tend to feature Scandinavian countries, the UK, Germany, and the US based on foreign aid, look very different when you count private transfers. The Gulf states shoot up the list, as does Switzerland. And the workers sending the money are often not wealthy individuals donating to charity, but relatively low-income migrants sacrificing a significant portion of their own earnings to support families back home, an act of generosity that is rarely acknowledged in international development discussions.

An important factor is that this private aid tends to be spent on the things that count, things that raise living standards, including food, housing, healthcare and education. Government to government aid can be spent by the recipients on prestige projects, and some undoubtedly finds its way into the Swiss bank accounts of their leaders.

There is a strong case for the UK to cut back, or even abolish, direct foreign aid, and spend the money instead of giving tax relief to those making private remittance to their families back in their countries of origin. This would hugely boost the amount of aid being transferred, and would direct it to where it would make most difference. The UK could announce that it was greatly increasing foreign aid by giving incentives to private individuals to provide it.

Madsen Pirie

The computing term yak shaving has two different definitions:

1.Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing one to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows one to solve a larger problem.

2. A less useful activity done consciously or subconsciously to procrastinate about a larger but more useful task.

One thing that frequently falls into this category is adopting a note-taking system, such as Zettelkasten, which I repeatedly have heard about and not adopted.

Such systems can fall into either of the above categories, depending on how you're approaching them.

I do not deny that the Zettelkasten approach could be useful. I just don't see a need to use it all the time and haven't bumped into a context in which I could find it useful.

Indeed, I have employed note-taking systems of different sorts over the years, and do have a general method for tracking my projects, but I have always been of the mind that it need only make the information findable later, in case I need it. Overall, a uniform method of tracking projects and information associated with them, and an automatically-generated list of all files on my computer are it.

That said, it was encouraging to read Sasha Chapin's thought-provoking post on "Notes Against Note-Taking Systems," which advises, among other things:

Getting lost in your knowledge management system is a fantastic way to avoid creating things. Or calling that friend you're estranged from. Or doing anything else even mildly threatening. It's also a fantastic way to convince yourself that unpreparedness is what's between you and creative work. If you believe you're unprepared, know that you will never transmute into the perfectly prepared person that you think exists in the future. Unfortunately, you have to start with the person currently in this chair. That's all there ever is.

It can be a great idea to find or develop an organized method for taking and tracking notes about an important topic -- and even to expand (or redeploy) such a system later on, but messing around with this without the need to do so is a waste of time in more ways than one.

-- CAV

Capitalism is a system of freedom where the government’s only role is to protect the rights of individuals.

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"[C]ommerce first taught nations to see with goodwill the wealth and prosperity of one another. Before, the patriot, unless sufficiently advanced in culture to feel the world his country, wished all countries weak, poor, and ill-governed but his own: he now sees in their wealth and progress a direct source of wealth and progress to his own country. 

    "It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it. And it may be said without exaggeration that the great extent and rapid increase of international trade, in being the principal guarantee of the peace of the world, is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas, the institutions, and the character of the human race"

~ John Stuart Mill from his 1848 book Principles of Political Economy, under the heading 'Indirect benefits of Commerce, Economical and Moral; still greater than the Direct'