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Public Private Partnership

You hear this phrase as business world lingo or something that is used to glam up a news soundbite.  But let us think about this for a minute.  What exactly is public?  And what is private?

If you are a private citizen then you are considered to be part of the public.  So clearly anything private must be public?  So then if someone is trying to keep some secrets from going public can they actually keep them private?

The army makes it even more confusing.  They actually call some people Private First Class or PFC.  Now what has class got to do with anything let alone something that has to be private?  Which btw is basically public.  Not too many of the public actually get to do anything First Class like travel for example but they don't actually call Coach as Public Coach Class.  That would not be classy for an airline.

That makes no sense.

So back to this Public Private Partnership mumbo jumbo.  It typically tries to refer to a scheme where a few Peters and Pauls have come together for the good of Peter and Paul.  Everyone else from the public is typically clueless of what Peter and Paul are really up to.  So in that sense its a private matter of Peter and Paul.

That this private deal makes it newsworthy is because the public has a right to know, especially in a democracy where the public elects their public figures to share the figures of what they figure is relevant to them.
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