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Comment by severine | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I get your point, care to elaborate?

He's wrong, that's not correct. In fact it comes from "state", statism is a term referring to the actions of a highly centralised government who handle economic planning and controls.

"Statism" is a term that has been around since the 1850s, but "statistics" is a term coined by Gottfried Aschenwall in the late 1770s.

Well, I didn't claim to be a trained historian, which is probably the correct training for this type of work. Based on your temporal evidence, I must concede the point.

However, I did not actually pull this straight out of my ass: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/statist

Thanks for the history lesson (seriously). I learned from it.

stat·ism ˈstādˌizəm/ noun noun: statism

    a political system in which the state has substantial centralized control over social and economic affairs.
    "the rise of authoritarian statism"

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