AA (acronyms anonymous): It is time to start stockpiling abbreviations before they run out.
The Economist Dec 11, 1999 v353 i8149 p18
OVER the centuries economists have given warning of shortages of food, fuel and almost every raw material. They were almost always wrong. Undeterred, The Economist would like to draw attention to a new shortage: of acronyms and abbreviations. So great is the demand in a world where new organisations spring up almost daily, and firms are increasingly known only by strings of initials, that there are simply not enough to go round.
Take the WTO--the World Trade Organisation, not the World Tourism Organisation, which was set up well before the free-traders pinched its initials. Readers of The Economist know that the meeting in Seattle was supposedly about opening markets to international trade. But perhaps, as a commentator in Barrons suggests, the Internet had been rife with rumour that the meeting was a gathering of representatives of the World Temperance Organisation. The chanting and the street demos were really a laudable--and wholly proportionate--protest by trade unionists, greens, turtle-lovers and anarchists against what they feared would be a global ban on alcohol. History will remember the "Bottle of Seattle".
Or look at the International Monetary Fund, which, for all its preaching to the third world, believes in monopolies when it suits its purposes. The Fund is suing a Californian mortgage firm, IMF Loans (an abbreviation of Iron Mountain Financial, based on a direct translation of the owner's German maiden name), to force it to change its name, which it claims is misleading-- though Russia has not yet come knocking on the mortgage lender's door. How long before the Washington-based IMF takes on Britain's International Managers' Forum, the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, or the Integrated Microscopy Facility (at Southwest Texas State University)?
Confusion abounds. Americans visiting Britain this summer were puzzled by demonstrators brandishing placards demanding that the government "ban GM". Are cars built by General Motors really so unreliable? No, the villain was genetically modified foods. A headline "ECB raises rates" could cause turmoil in financial markets. Yet rather than tighter monetary policy at the European Central Bank it might refer to the England Cricket Board increasing membership fees. "Turmoil at the LSE" might signify a market crash on the London Stock Exchange or a staff walkout at the London School of Economics. And if a fellow traveller remarks that he is with the CIA, don't be alarmed. As a member of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, that bulge is more likely to be a calculator than a gun.
The nasty truth is that there are only 17,576 different permutations of three letters. That is not enough, when a multi- national organisation such as the ECB requires no fewer than five sets of abbreviations in the languages of the EU. Add one more letter and the permutations number almost 457,000. Yet even this does not solve the dilemma. Is the CBOT the Chicago Board of Trade or the Central Bank of Turkey?
This is a clear market failure. In the market for cabbages or computers, prices would rise, encouraging greater supply or choking off demand. But the supply of abbreviations is fixed--and the price is stuck at zero. Demand cannot be satisfied. Yet multiple use of an abbreviation only creates confusion. The solution is simple. A new organisation is needed to tax and control the proliferation of initials. It might be called AAAAAA (the Association for the Alleviation of Absurd Acronyms and Asinine Abbreviations). |
