I don't think its hard to see how the same is true of programming jobs being taken by unpaid interns. How is my group payment service that pays its employees su

I don't think its hard to see how the same is true of programming jobs being taken by unpaid interns. How is my group payment service that pays its employees supposed to compete with WePay that uses unpaid labor? Simple. You'll compete and you'll win (assuming we control the other variables, that is). Why? Well for the simple reason that programming != menial labour. If you pay a premium to have a small group of elite programmers working for you, and WePay has a small group of $0 programmers doing -$10 work - you'll win in the long run. This discussion is a) not about programmers. And even if it were - b) the argument doesn't apply. You get what you pay for. Nobody is arguing that you should ditch your technical department for a team of unpaid, inexperienced code-monkeys, the same way nobody is arguing that you should ditch your administrative department for a team of unpaid, inexperienced business students. Startups are too small, and too close to the market to do things like that. They simply won't survive.