Which is what I'm arguing for. Others here are arguing that interns shouldn't get paid for their work. I've never argued that they should get equal pay to regular employees. Just that they should be pay the market value of their work.
And dang near 2/3rd of the posters here thought that was a Communist or Leftist idea! Which tells me there are a lot of people here at the Free Republic that really aren't all the free-market oriented... or conservative, for that matter.
You seem to misunderstand many of our positions, and I believe willfully so.
You claim to be the “silent voice of the free market”, but you refuse to allow the real silent voice to be heard - the hundreds, thousands, and even millions of transactions that take place on a daily basis. The agreement to take an unpaid internship is merely one of those transactions. It is a transaction based on the perceived value earned by each individual in the agreement - the employer and the employee.
But you, instead, would substitute your own will and opinion for that of the actual participants. THAT is what makes your opinion collectivist.
At the companies I have worked at, both as a “co-op” engineer in college and as a professional, pay their interns. That is more the rule than the exception in engineering (I will assert this, but will also admit it is opinion - I have no statistical data to back it up). There are apparently some professions where unpaid interns are the norm.
But you would disallow free choice to enter into such a situation by fiat - because of your Randian need to measure all worth in only dollars and sense. Your equation of voluntary work arrangements for no pay with slavery are ludicrous - the slave has no choice, and the volunteer does not hand over the deed to him or herself when they agree to the unpaid internship.
The primary coin of the unpaid intern’s remuneration is knowledge. Apparently, you do not value this - not nearly as much as those who are willing to work for it without monetary reimbursement besides.
It appears to have the same worth in your eyes as free choice - none.
When I see so-called “free market” arguments against free choice, I see statism at work. The issue in your mind, apparently, is that you cannot see any situation where a person’s labor is worth no more than the experience and knowledge gained by performing that labor. Instead, the government should set an arbitrary compensation level.
That doesn’t sound all that Randian to me.
What if the true market value of the work they perform during their internship is zero or negative?
When you consider the cost to the company of providing supervision and training, for some jobs the value of the employee in the first month or two, while they try to get up to speed, is often zero. I know that when I deal with new young hires, they are generally of negative worth for the first few months. That gets fixed once they finally figure out which end is up, and they start being productive.
The internship process is a way to discover which potential new hires is likely to be productive, in a way that avoids the potentially costly and emotional dismissal process for those that don't work out.