Public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science, psychology, marketing, and advertising. In public relations and communication science, it is one of the more ambiguous concepts in the field. Although it has definitions in the theory of the field that have been formulated from the early 20th century onwards, it has suffered in more recent years from being blurred, as a result of conflation of the idea of a public with the notions of audience, market segment, community, constituency, and stakeholder.
Security
Security is freedom from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) from external forces. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems, and any other entity or phenomenon vulnerable to unwanted change by its environment.
Security
No nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others. We all share responsibility for each other’s security, and only by working to make each other secure can we hope to achieve lasting security for ourselves.
Kofi Annan, Address at the Truman Presidential Museum and Library, Independence, Missouri, USA (11 December 2006)
Security
But why should there be an exception relative to security? What special reason is there that the production of security cannot be relegated to free competition? Why should it be subjected to a different principle and organized according to a different system?
Gustave de Molinari, tr. J. Huston McCulloch, §II of The Production of Security (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009; orig. 1849), p. 24.
Security
[T]he production of security should, in the interests of the consumers of this intangible commodity, remain subject to the law of free competition. … [N]o government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity.
Gustave de Molinari, tr. J. Huston McCulloch, §II of The Production of Security (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009; orig. 1849), pp. 22–23.
