Antonio Linares
The Economy is Getting Compressed into an API.
10/29/2025, 4:16:24 PM
Economic Summary
- Individuals, companies, and the nation operate at nested layers of optimization; solving one layer doesn't guarantee overall economic optimality, creating coordination problems and inefficiencies.
- Because people lack full context, decision-making is often precarious and geared toward local incentives, which can limit aggregate outcomes and slow systemic improvement.
- The speaker argues that GDP — the apparent large, insurmountable economic block — may be abstracted or 'compressed into an API' by technology, implying potential massive scale and productivity gains (the '100x' idea) that could outgrow traditional GDP measures.
Bullish
- Economic activity can be compressed into APIs, enabling massive productivity and scale.
- Technology could unlock orders-of-magnitude growth beyond current GDP constraints (the '100x' thesis).
Bearish
- Humans lack the context to optimize large-scale economic systems.
- Local optimizations by employees and firms can produce precarious, suboptimal outcomes for the broader economy.