A sea of acronyms - It’s all in the name

When examining any social or societal “help” area, one is bound to run into a sea of acronyms. What are the incentives behind this? Why are acronyms so popular for governmental and near-governmental (ie, United Nations) programs?

My thought on this is that it’s all in the name. Government organizations are widely recognized for their extensive bureaucracy, and the only way to include the entire tree of departments is through an acronym. Starting from the top organization down to the specific department doing work.

It’s really just an economy of space.

The great thing is that one could argue that this is a place where markets excel–marketing (no pun intended). Perhaps people would recall the name of a program if it was catchy and developed after years of market research. Apply this theory to Medicare (which, although has a short name without an acronym, is not thoroughly adopted) and hey, we’ve got a cheap way to expand adoption of the program.