There's an underlying misconception here.

It's true that people who want to work in, say, the market gardening sector and who have a number of contacts in the market gardening industry are at an advantage over people who want to work in the market gardening sector who don't have any contacts in the market gardening industry. This is true only because most people don't have any contacts in market gardening.

A social network will confer an advantage on you only while it is small. If everybody belongs to a large social network, then the network won't benefit any of them. If everybody "knows" everybody else in some sense, then knowing the CEO of Prodco won't give you any advantage over anyone else who might want to work there. Knowing the CEO of Prodco confers an advantage on you only if nobody else who wants to work there knows him (her.)

The government here (Scotland) does not understand this, insisting that training young people to write CVs, perform well in interviews, or read, will enable them to get jobs. In reality the problem is that hundreds of thousands of jobs have been exported to sweat shops in China in the unlikely hope that customers won't notice. Of course, having a good CV only helps a young person to get a job for as long as most unemployed young people have bad CVs. If everyone has a good CV, or is party to a big social network, then neither the CV nor the network are of any use if finding a job. The solution is to create more jobs in Scotland. You can create more jobs in Scotland if you ban outsourcing (under the anti slavery laws and by a small extension of the minimum wage laws) and discourage imports of goods traditionally made in Scotland. Can you imagine that Tartan Bitter beer is manufactured off shore now? What a disgrace.

Next up: The Olympics 2012. How you can help everyone in a crowded stadium to see the action by giving each of them a strong wooden box to stand on.