Along these lines, it doesn't fit to equate unpaid internships to serfdom. Serfdom involves effectively permanent, near total servitude to a landowner for most

Along these lines, it doesn't fit to equate unpaid internships to serfdom. Serfdom involves effectively permanent, near total servitude to a landowner for most aspects of life. Uh, wage slavery? How much of a person's salary is spent just on the basics such as food and clothing and gas and education? The minimum wage is a horrible stain on a free society. It traps people with low skills out of work and cements them into an underclass that's much more difficult to break out of. It prevents business that are operating on the edge from continuing to operate. It's a classic example of do-gooders riding in and creating damage. This is how the system is structured; there is a permanent underclass that will accept any wages. Even more educated people will lower their wage expectations when the economy appears bad. This means that companies can get cheaper labour at any time to pick up slack or as replacements if their current workers get too uppity and demand a living wage. it locks out people who are in a worse situation - unempployed. Unemployed is only bad if it means starvation or homelessness. In a socialist, communist, or anarchist society unemployment would be okay. Unemployed workers wouldn't starve, they would still be allowed to live, and they could take part-time jobs/unpaid internships and learn new skills without worrying about making ends meet. There are much better avenues that would be cheaper and have more positive effect on people: basic risk, valuation and business skills being taught in early high-school, television campaigns that encourage people to think about how their labour is used, what they could do to make themselves marketable. Mechanisms to get people speaking English more effectively. Lower taxation. Effective technical colleges. So your solution is to train people to become effective human resources for businesses to consume? That doesn't help. We already do that. You're saying that workers need to learn how to be better workers so that they can prosper. You're saying that they should make themselves as appealing to businesses as possible and somehow, you're assuming that this will give them higher wages. The only reason people get higher wages is because they demand them either through a union or through an informal agreement with other workers that they won't work for less. This is true in the IT industry and is one of the reasons why IT workers don't see a need for a union. We all have agreed never to work for a shitty wage. We know that we can just take our skills elsewhere or start our own company or whatever because we stand up for ourselves.