As an observer of this world, I can't help but call attention to interesting connections that I feel are being overlooked. Forgive me if you have heard this one before, but I have not, which is why I am creating this post. If you dont like to read, or just dont have the time, Figure 1 below pretty much explains it all.

Fig. 1
Please note the correlation between the unemployment rate (yellow) and facebooks monthly traffic (blue)

Black hole economics comes to me as a concept which has a severe negative impact on the growth of an economy and the people that are a part of it. I use the term black hole because this seems to be how these micro industries operate. Here's a brief description of a black hole from wikipedia.

"A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, including light, can escape."

Lets start by looking at some industries that are NOT black holes. The auto makers not only provide transportation for workers to get to and from jobs, they also provide jobs within the industry itself. They, in a sense, provide a useful product that people can use productively, which in turn "stimulates" the economy. Agriculture, now this should be a no-brainer, as every animal on this planet consumes some sort of food. Therefore, it has a positive effect, people can't do much if they don't eat. On the other hand there is one industry that does not have the stimulating effect that most industries have. Ill call it "The Worthless Web". This industry takes in the majority of the most valuable resource (time) and returns far less in economic positivity. Call it a rant or call it interesting, but the following content will give my perspective of this industry.

When looking at the most recent economic down turn (depression), I begin to notice the vast amount of emphasis on the fact that so many people are losing jobs, and/or cant find jobs. Then I noticed the enormous growth in social networking, social bookmarking, and entertainment sites. (facebook, myspace, digg, youtube, etc.)

"Whats the connection?" you might ask. Well, it's not hard to notice that the majority of videos, posts and comments are about frivolous matters which deal with anything but self improvement or the improvement of others. This is the reason why I included the jobs sites traffic and w3schools. They are a part of the web industry, yet have an orientation to give back to those who visit (but look at how low their traffic is when compared).

If there were as many people visiting websites to find a job, there may not be as many people without one. And if these people don't have the skills to find a job, then they should be spending more hours acquiring those skills from sites like w3schools (which is basically a flat-line when compared to the others). Now, there has however been a decent amount of traffic at www.ehow.com, which is basically a site for learning. This is great! But my disappointment starts when I look at the "Top 10 eHows". Here are the top 5 from that list.

1. How to Give Your Boyfriend a Valentine's Day Present
2. How to Install the ActiveX Control on Facebook Photos
3. How to Find Your Computer IP Address (Windows)
4. How to Make Guacamole
5. How to Upload Photos on Facebook

Two of them deal with facebook! Not a single one appears to be progress towards a career foundation.

Moving on, I would also like to mention, the secondary effect (or primary depending on how you look at it). The time spent on these sites, which take away from the productivity of those who do have jobs. Now, Ill leave it up to the individual as to what is a reasonable work to browse ratio, but I just find it hard to believe that we are being as efficient as we can when the top youtube video has 136,788,775 views. That's almost 1 view for every 2 people in the US. And that's not the kicker, the real joke is the actual content of the video (do a search for "Evolution of Dance", and you'll see what I'm talking about). I wouldn't mind if the video was a tutorial on how to create drinking water from salt water, or how to do CPR, or a motivational passage from one of our world religions, or even geometry 101, but its not, its just not.

And yes yes, I understand that this post and all my others are in some way a contribution to all the crap on the web. I just hope that one can recognize my attempts to disseminate useful knowledge.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is fact, hence the word "theory". I will continue to look for more connections, and consult with some of the good minds that I know to find out if there is any other evidence to support this theory. If you have links or any other useful info, please contact me

During the writing of this I was able to think of one other industry which may create similar effects in our economy and culture, Sports. Though it may not be as severe as the black holes found on the Internet, its concentration of intake, is far greater than its positive economic output.