>Privatize is an acceptable verbiage for a government or government-owned entity which has outsourced to a private corporation.
Given how the term is conventionally used, 'privatize' implies that for-profit enterprise has taken over, and even pedantically - looking at what the root word of the term technically means instead of how the term is conventionally used - it implies for-profit enteprise, given private ownership, in the strictest sense of the term, means no restrictions on how the private actor who owns the property may use that property, including no restrictions on distributing profits to shareholders.
> Given how the term is conventionally used, 'privatize' implies that for-profit enterprise has taken over, and even pedantically
Granted this would be an uncommon use of the verbiage given the situation, that does not mean it is incorrect usage. You are correct that typically privatization occurs when a government service is executed by or government infrastructure is transferred to a private for-profit corporation, it is not necessarily the case that it has to be a for-profit corporation for privatization to occur.
Non-profits can still be and are privately owned, what’s different about them is the accounting rules they are subject to and their status per statute. In exchange for their tax advantaged status, they give up their ability to return a profit to the owners, but it still has owners.
Also just a side note, I would be interested to hear if anyone wants to chime in if any of this is fundamentally different under Portuguese law.
I was just disputing the claim that 'privatization' connotes using non-government contractors, as opposed to specifically for-profit enterprise.
Whether non-profit private entities have the same properties that - in the case of for-profit enterprise - motivate critics of privatization to oppose government reliance on them, is orthogonal to that point. But on the subject, that might be true, but my take is that the important part to most critics of privatization is the entities are motivated by profit.
Given how the term is conventionally used, 'privatize' implies that for-profit enterprise has taken over, and even pedantically - looking at what the root word of the term technically means instead of how the term is conventionally used - it implies for-profit enteprise, given private ownership, in the strictest sense of the term, means no restrictions on how the private actor who owns the property may use that property, including no restrictions on distributing profits to shareholders.