I read something in a book about the history of England that's somewhat connected to this : In England somewhere around the 18-19th century, members of parliam

I read something in a book about the history of England that's somewhat connected to this : In England somewhere around the 18-19th century, members of parliament got no salary. The highest aspiration that you could have was to make enough money from other sources so that you could devote yourself to being a politician. Now, some famous politician at the time recognized the fact that this implied that only people of considerable wealth could take part in the government, that this was a problem, and the law was eventually changed so that they would get a basic salary. It sounds a lot like what I read in that article mentioned, where good internships are essentially impossible to get for people who can't afford to work for free for any extended period of time.