Throughout modern economic history, human intelligence has been the scarce input. Capital was abundant (or at least replicable). Natural resources were finite but substitutable. Technology improved slowly enough for humans to adapt. Intelligence, the ability to analyze, decide, create, persuade, and coordinate, was what could not be replicated at scale.

Human intelligence derived its inherent value from its scarcity. All institutions of our economy, from the labor market to the mortgage market and the tax code, were designed for a world in which that premise held.

Now we are experiencing the reduction of that premium. Artificial intelligence has become a competent and rapidly improving substitute for human intelligence in an ever-increasing range of tasks. The financial system, optimized for decades for a world with scarce human minds, is being repriced. This repricing is painful, messy, and far from complete.

But repricing is not the same as collapse.

The economy can find a new equilibrium. Achieving that is one of the few tasks that only humans can perform. We need to do it correctly.

This is the first time in history that the economy's most productive asset has generated fewer jobs, not more. No framework fits because none was designed for a world where the scarce input became abundant. Therefore, we must create new frameworks. The only question that matters is whether we build them in time.