“Despite being numbers, polysemy poisons accounting, which slips into stories as soon as it is subjected to torture.”
In the stories that Lewis Carroll wrote with Alice as the protagonist, one of the typical characters in English literature (“Humpty Dumpty”, in Spanish Zanco Panco or also Tentetieso) tells the young girl in a disdainful tone: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Alice responds: “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.” HD concludes, “The question is who will be the master. That’s all.” Something similar happens in these latitudes: “Who appoints the Attorney General? …well, that.” Accounting aims to be an exact science (“what are not accounts are stories,” said a seasoned accountant) but it slips into stories as soon as it is subjected to torture. And to torture it, nothing is better than the use of names that bear polysemy, which mean what the user wants them to mean, which is not necessarily what third parties understand. And despite being numbers, polysemy poisons accounting.
Leandro Caínibano and Felipe Herranz explain in this issue the polysemy that the concept EBITDA encompasses, increasingly used in the presentation of results of companies as a synthetic indicator of their good (or not so good) financial health. For the regulators of generally accepted accounting, it is not easy to specify what should be included (or not) in the so-called EBITDA, and without that precision the usefulness of the term is relative. Faced with the difficulty, the advice is none other than to expand the explanations, more footnotes specifying the concepts and the numbers that go inside and those that remain outside. Without those detailed explanations, the use of the concept can be suspicious and well worth a more detailed investigation to avoid falling into the meaning that the proponent wants, which does not have to adjust to reality. That inquisitive spirit should be the norm in social sciences and economics. Every assertion deserves several questions and details, many details. Clemente Polo does this in his reflection on the housing shortage and its consequent increase in costs. A current topic this season. More than 27 million registered homes at this moment represent a set that is too large and complex to draw hasty and simple conclusions on which to base efficient policies.
There is a shortage of housing. It is evident. But the question is to examine in more detail: Where is there a shortage?, what type?, what users demand housing? Once again, we will stumble upon decisive data that demographics will provide, changing, dynamic, affected by migrations and by different ways of life and family. Housing for young people to emancipate, for students, for tourists, to address divorces, for the elderly… Each market segment has its needs, its shortcomings, and its intelligent and partially effective responses. Always with the trial/error exercise, with evaluation of public policies, which often shines by its absence. Without going into details, it is talking for the sake of talking, promising for the sake of appearing, talking like “tentetieso” to confuse and not to clarify. Polysemy is one of the evils of politics in these times, it confuses and entangles, but does not resolve the problem due to a deficit of definition.♦
