Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ?

Re: Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You

#91

Post by apotheon » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 4:44 PM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #80

apotheon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People frame these unpaid internships as some great act of heroic entrepreneurial spirit, and they're not. I'm not calling them "heroic". I'm just annoyed that other people are casting them as "evil". They can be mutually beneficial, and I don't see a problem with that. The "evil" is people trying to prohibit mutually beneficial transactions. By the way, I love the entrepreneurial spirit. I just don't love the "you…

Then look at it this way. Barter is taxed, and working for free for "experience" is clearly a form of barter. Unpaid internships still must be taxed. They will probably be taxed at a higher prevailing wage than minimum wage. So, you have tax payment going on, while no employment paying is going on. Meanwhile back at the ranch, rich or reasonably well-off kids can take free internships, which creates more free interns…

> If the internships are paid, everyone is better off

You're assuming that the cost of providing internships is essentially zero. When the likelihood of internships being offered at all (based on cost) is factored into things, your argument falls apart.

Re: Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You

#92

Post by apotheon » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 4:45 PM UTC

uopnuiyb wrote: post #84

psranga wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, one is an equal partnership, the other isn't. The unpaid internship law serves to give some protections to the little guy. Btw, I really don't understand why a billionaire (?) can't afford to pay hourly minimum wages to a bunch of kids.

Simple solution - call the job a training course and charge the interns $10k to do it!

You still wouldn't be allowed to have them do actually useful work for you.

Re: Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You

#93

Post by doki_pen » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 4:45 PM UTC

With unemployment so high, why should there be free labor? It is not in the best interest of "We the People".

Re: Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You

#94

Post by cwan » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 4:46 PM UTC

uopnuiyb wrote: post #82

cwan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is an unpaid internship anywhere close to being slavery? The unpaid intern can walk away at any time. Further, it's the choice of the unpaid intern - not their family as to whether or not to accept the choice.

So in a recession if GM/Boeing/Walmart demand that all new hires work for no pay for their first year 'as intern trainees' that would be OK? If they fire these people on day 364 and get new trainees next year - that would be ok?

Would it surprise you to know that Walmart pays its entry level workers significantly higher than minimum wage? It's relevant because it shows companies like Walmart/Boeing/GM are not price setters / don't have as much control as you presume. Further, the "race to the bottom" in wages is often not desirable or in the interests of a firm.

Sure I don't have a problem with the practice you describe, but I'm pretty sure they would being unable to find workers who care enough or are even productive and losing any good workers to others. The employment market doesn't operate in a vacuum.

Re: Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You

#95

Post by ahoyhere » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 4:46 PM UTC

apotheon wrote: post #68

ahoyhere wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sex acts that are considered illegal do not create people. Thus they have no greater impact than childless heterosexual couples who only have sex in the missionary position. Whether that childlessness is intentional or accidental is even more irrelevent. Moreover, spouses/sex partners and offspring are not half as fungible as employees. If Joe and Sue (or Bob and Brad) have a child, don't have a child, or adopt a…

If it were possible to ban all non-procreative sex acts and all forms of contraception, it definitely would affect how many children are born.

Of course if you banned contraception, the birth rate would rise. But that's not what we're talking about, is it?

We're talking about "private acts between consenting adults." Birth control is another kettle of fish entirely.

You're taking the employment/sex "between two consenting adults" line and then adding an extreme element, like, for example, everybody on earth is required to work 40 hours a week.

Re: Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You

#96

Post by apotheon » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 4:47 PM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #81

kingkongrevenge wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joe doing it up the butt created the AIDS epidemic. Seems publicly relevant to me. Not that I personally care much about Joe doing it up the butt, but once you think government has a role in sculpting society there is no distinction between personal social issues and personal business issues. Women choosing to have children out of wedlock has a huge effect on everyone. Much more than some guy offering unpaid internsh…

And people eating pork created the swine flu epidemic. Please. Because a disease preys on a population does not mean that population created the disease, whether or not it becomes an epidemic. I'm pretty sure that AIDS didn't spring fully formed out of the abyss, thanks to anal sex. And then, if you want to get picky, the deliberate ignoring of the health issues by public authorities escalated the epidemic.

While I'm not particularly fond of kingkongrevenge's example, I don't think you're faithfully representing it. He didn't claim it created the disease -- he claimed it created the epidemic.

Re: Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You

#97

Post by timr » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 4:47 PM UTC

euroclydon wrote: post #6

The true crime is that more companies are not offering minimum wage internships. I for one, would be happy to recruit smart kids from college, and spend ten or twenty hours a week providing them with direction. I know the software company I work for could utilize their talent for brute-force work like dependency tracking in our code base, testing, build automation, documentation, etc. I think more small and medium si…

Exactly. It's sad that the #1 rated comment right now is some ridiculous non sequitur about sex, when there are some pretty glaring holes in Cuban's logic.

First off, the value proposition: Cuban is clearly intensely interested in getting this done, because it might be valuable to his company someday. Paraphrased, his argument is that it's not guaranteed to be valuable today, so he shouldn't have to pay anyone to do it. He wants the value, but he doesn't want to pay for it. That's exploitation, no matter how much he tries to sugar-coat it.

Second, the notion of "experience" being valuable: if it's true that the work being offered is worthless to Mark Cuban's company, then the intern isn't working for the Dallas Mavericks. She's at best doing something tangentially related to the Mavericks, and hoping that Mark Cuban or his organization will give her a good recommendation someday for doing it. The value proposition to the intern is, at best, debatable, and worse, the intern is in a position where she must excel in an unpaid position to gain any value at all. The best you can say about it is that it's ethically slimy.

Third, internships have inherent value to the employer -- they're extended interviews for paying jobs. That's why so many tech companies pay summer salaries and perks to college kids; they want to recruit good employees, cheaply. Cuban completely disregards this notion.

Fourth, Cuban grants that the internship has some probability of value to the Mavericks. Thus, the internship has some expected value to the organization. Cuban's argument that the internship has no value is just wrong. Companies routinely hire interns with no concrete expectations about their productivity, because the expectation of value is higher than the cost of a few interns. I'm highly skeptical of any counterargument that this wouldn't also be the case for the Dallas Mavericks.

In short, there are any number of logical holes in Cuban's argument, but the HN conversation is featuring a conversation about sex and individual liberty instead of discussing the topic at hand.

Re: Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You

#98

Post by electromagnetic » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 4:51 PM UTC

imp wrote: post #27

psranga wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, one is an equal partnership, the other isn't. The unpaid internship law serves to give some protections to the little guy. Btw, I really don't understand why a billionaire (?) can't afford to pay hourly minimum wages to a bunch of kids.

He probably didn't become a billionaire without trying to find ways to cut costs as much as possible. He's not running a charity.

No he's running a business with employees, some of which he isn't paying because they're 'interns'.

Re: Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You

#99

Post by cperciva » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 4:51 PM UTC

apotheon wrote: post #25

cperciva wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unlicensed medicine That's completely different. The licensing of medical practitioners is not based on any notion of protecting society from deviant behaviour; it is based on the need to protect vulnerable individuals from fraud. I have no problem with consenting individuals engaging in sex acts or internships, with or without pay -- but I absolutely believe that fraud, in all its forms, should be illegal, since a f…

One need not be licensed to be honest.

True, and one doesn't need a driver's license to know how to drive -- but a system of licensing is the most efficient way of verifying qualifications.

Re: Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You

#100

Post by tvon » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 4:51 PM UTC

byrneseyeview wrote: post #56

tvon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, it's not like the "slave" is someone the "master" just kidnapped. It's an agreed upon situation with an established "safe word" the "slave" can utter at any time to stop whatever is happening.

An internship is just like that. The safe word is "I quit."

I don't know what else I would expect from a thread that started on such an idiotic statement, but yes, you can say that sadomasochism and unpaid internships are similar in that you can get out of both of them by saying words.