Mathematical comment that might amuse LWers: the compactness theorem is equivalent to the ultrafilter lemma, which in turn is essentially equivalent to the statement that Arrow's impossibility theorem is false if the number of voters is allowed to be infinite. More precisely, non-principal ultrafilters are the same as methods for determining elections based on votes from infinitely many voters in a way that satisfies all of the conditions in Arrow's theorem.

Mathematical comment that some LWers might find relevant: the compactness theorem is independent of ZF, which roughly speaking one should take as meaning that it is not possible to write down a non-principal ultrafilter explicitly. If you're sufficiently ultrafinitist, you might not trust a line of reasoning that involved the compactness theorem but purported to be related to a practical real-world problem (e.g. FAI).