4 ms·

It may not be a popular opinion but I agree with the US gov on this one. Everyone wants something for free. However, I think the big problem is how the compens

by rapind 17y ago

It may not be a popular opinion but I agree with the US gov on this one. Everyone wants something for free. However, I think the big problem is how the compensation is valued. If the experience gained by the intern is more valuable than minimum wage, then yes, the law seems broken. However for every job that would actually provide meaningful experience and benefit the intern there are probably many other internships that provide very little if any benefit to the intern. Since the gov really has no easy way of measuring the experience / networking compensation, if they attempted to, it would be to the detriment of the mojority of iterns, who would end up working for free for very little if any benefit. I don't have any numbers to back up my claim of non-beneficial v.s. beneficial free internships. However, I also don't have anything to gain either way and it's just my impartial gut feeling that any system that tried to solve his problem would create more problems for the majority of these free interns, or end up costing tax payer's a lot to police the practice.

cwan 17y ago
You haven't explained why you agree with the US government on this one (though it's not just the US government). Value is subjective - so in the end, why would we rely on the government to establish value in the first place? Are you saying that instead of letting people make their own choices at an individual level as to whether or not the experience is of value, it's better for government to just ban the choice altogether?
- akeefer 17y ago
  I'll take a crack at justifying it. First of all, if you have a minimum wage law (which we do), it has to be enforced. Allowing people to work as "unpaid interns" is a half-assed way that corporations take to work around that law. You can argue about the efficacy of minimum wage laws, but it seems like real empirical studies (instead of just theoretical arguments) have been pretty inconclusive. And overall, the point is that you can't just let people create a massive loophole in that law by just deciding not to pay people at all. Secondly, from a simple ethical standpoint, unpaid internships privilege people who are already well enough off to be able to give their labor away for free (i.e. generally middle-class or wealthier kids whose parents can support them). You don't get a lot of poor kids applying for unpaid internships at age 20 or 22 because, guess what, they need those 40+ hours a week to actually earn an income. So the tradition of unpaid internships in certain traditionally white-collar industries tends to be a subtle form of class discrimination. And recasting it as a "volunteer" thing is also a total cop-out: you volunteer for a non-profit charity, not a for-profit corporation.
  - apotheon 17y ago
    > You can argue about the efficacy of minimum wage laws, but it seems like real empirical studies (instead of just theoretical arguments) have been pretty inconclusive. Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. > And overall, the point is that you can't just let people create a massive loophole in that law by just deciding not to pay people at all. I, for one, don't have any problem with people finding "loopholes" in bad laws. > So the tradition of unpaid internships in certain traditionally white-collar industries tends to be a subtle form of class discrimination. Class warfare? Seriously . . . ?
    - akeefer 17y ago
      "A subtle form of class discrimination" is a far cry from "class warfare." I'm saying that, ethically speaking, unpaid internships help to further close off certain careers to people who are traditionally disadvantaged by giving opportunities to get ahead to people who are already traditionally more advantaged. If you disagree with that logic, that's fine: just explain how I'm wrong instead of just dismissing it.
      - apotheon 17y ago
        I disagree with the idea that the possibility that one set of people might be more "advantaged" than another is good justification for ensuring nobody gets a leg up. . . . and claiming otherwise, specifically when those sets of people are identified by social or economic class, is pretty much "code smell" for "class warfare".
  - cwan 17y ago
    So then what you're arguing then is society is better off for there not to have any work being done at all - essentially what Mark Cuban's concluding statement is: for the "benefit" of the exploited intern, we would rather they sit at home rather than gain any experience at the risk that the experience is useless? What does it matter if the firm is for profit or not for profit/charity/government agency in the first place? So charities couldn't possibly exploit the poor/their workers? By this logic, should we ban or let government set prices on everything? After all, any free giveaways causes pressure on substitutes to go down in value. So by setting a price on a good or service which is below what some other guy has, you're essentially being "exploited". Class discrimination? Right, so you're arguing that it's not fair that "middle-class or wealthier kids whose parents can support them" have the privilege of unpaid internships so this practice should be stopped? As for empirical studies, the problem is that it's very difficult to isolate the variables but when it comes to understanding simple price floors and price ceilings, it's a pretty simple, conclusive relationship. Further, the studies are pretty clear in my books with the overwhelming evidence of cause and effect of minimum wages (sure there are those that are inconclusive, but if you're looking for a "scientific consensus" - you won't find the average economist saying that it's inconclusive unless they happen to work for a union): http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/50years.htm http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/50years.htm
- timr 17y ago
  "Value is subjective - so in the end, why would we rely on the government to establish value in the first place?" We don't. The government takes the logical position that all such internships are illegal, so regulators don't need to make that subjective judgment. In this light, the answer to your second question is "yes" -- the government is erring on the side of worker safety. It's a judgment call, and you can disagree with it, but both sides of the debate have perfectly reasonable arguments.
  - apotheon 17y ago
    I find it disturbing that when "both sides of the debate have perfectly reasonable arguments" the knee-jerk response is "Let's regulate the fuck out of it!"
    - timr 17y ago
      It's not a knee-jerk response. For future reference, a good indication of a knee-jerk response is a remark that reduces an opponent's arguments to seven-word soundbites involving profanity.
      - apotheon 17y ago
        > It's not a knee-jerk response. How else would you describe a response that doesn't even take into account the possibility that one could avoid government regulation when there's apparently no solid proof that regulation is better than the lack of regulation? It sounds like a knee-jerk response to me. Why don't you default to "We shouldn't spend a bunch of extra money on regulation when we don't have any reason to believe regulation will help, or even won't hurt!" instead? If you have some meaningful, reasonable explanation for that choice, I guess I might have been mistaken about the idea that it's a knee-jerk response, but you haven't shared any reasons so far, and there aren't any obvious explanations for why wasting resources on regulation that might just make things worse is better than avoiding that regulation.
        timr 17y ago
- rapind 17y ago
  I thought I did explain my opinion, but yes you've stated it much more succinctly than I have. I believe the law protects people (specifically young people starting their careers) from exploitive practices. It also hurts them by penalizing non-exploitive and beneficial practices. I personally beleive the protection outweighs the potential benefits in this law, and thus agree with this law. Is this a little big brother'ish? Perhaps, but nonetheless I would vote in favour of it.
  - cwan 17y ago
    Can you provide an example where you would see a young person starting their career would find themselves worse off by accepting an unpaid internship? I presume you accept that the young person would only do so if (a) they weren't able to find a paid position, or (b) the experience they believed they could get would exceed the pay they could get elsewhere - and presumably therefore would result in future benefits?
    - rapind 17y ago
      Actually I don't think everyone starting out has those same priorities. I think many would go for the carrot, as I most likely would have if I'd been unable to find paying work fresh out of school. If a telemarketing firm had approached me for a free internship with the promise of riches once I put in my time, I may very well have turned down paying positions at McDonald's etc. I'm not trying to say most of us are dumb coming out of school, but I do believe that the fake pot of gold is pretty appealing and that there are many ethically questionable companies who would make all kinds of promises if it would benefit their bottom line. I think the system where these companies are forced to act at least somewhat ethically by paying a minimum wage is a good system. I think there is and should be a line though. If you are unable to value your work properly, young or old, then maybe you simply don't deserve to make more than minimum wage. I don't think society should pay for your bad decisions beyond a certain point. However, I like that you can still at least make some sort of living, and I think the company that is benefiting from your poor decision making skills should be footing that bill, and not tax payers. It would be infuriating to pay a wellfare tax while the persons receiving the benefit of that tax are passing it on to companies where they are working for free. A company could get an extremely discounted rate for certain services if they were able to hire free interns. Then to take it to extremes, if a publicly traded company could gain a competitive edge by doing this, then it's practically illegal for them not to.
byrneseyeview 17y ago
Since the gov really has no easy way of measuring the experience / networking compensation, if they attempted to, it would be to the detriment of the mojority of iterns, who would end up working for free for very little if any benefit. The government can't figure it out. Can the interns? If there's a huge population that's willing to work for free, and they're all undervalued, then a company that hires interns for minimum wage will be able to get all the good ones.
tnovelli 17y ago
Second that. We had unpaid interns at my last job, and their work consisted of telemarketing, harvesting email addresses, web form spamming, data entry. It wouldn't be cost effective if their earned even $5/hr. What did they get out of it... cynicism? What happened to paying your way through college with paying jobs? Kids need to put their bottom line first, just like employers do.
- apotheon 17y ago
  What were they promised?
  - tnovelli 17y ago
    Ahh, good question! 3 college credits for ~250 hours. That's the incentive. One did it just for the experience, and regretted it.
    - arghnoname 17y ago
      And they probably paid for those college credits. A typical state school might put that at $900 bucks. Great deal huh? The unpaid internship thing is often a scam to get people to do just the kind of work you're describing. In companies I've worked for, I've seen it done. I saw interns manually 'cleaning' data in a way that could be entirely automated. I told my employer at the time that they'd never be able to keep up with new incoming data and it's terrible, pointless work. I also said I could automate it in about 20 hours of work. He said, "we'll put an ad in for more interns." Young people are naive, it's part of being young. It's unscrupulous to take advantage of that. Cuban could have paid internships paying at minimum wage if he'd like. It would still be far less expensive than getting actual professionals to do that work. His real complaint should be that he can't extract any real value for that work from the marketplace, because that's where his real problem is.
    - apotheon 17y ago
      Did they get what they were promised? If so . . . where's the problem? Is it that people just assumed they'd get more than they were promised?

by rapind 17y ago

cwan 17y ago

You haven't explained why you agree with the US government on this one (though it's not just the US government). Value is subjective - so in the end, why would we rely on the government to establish value in the first place? Are you saying that instead of letting people make their own choices at an individual level as to whether or not the experience is of value, it's better for government to just ban the choice altogether?

akeefer 17y ago
I'll take a crack at justifying it. First of all, if you have a minimum wage law (which we do), it has to be enforced. Allowing people to work as "unpaid interns" is a half-assed way that corporations take to work around that law. You can argue about the efficacy of minimum wage laws, but it seems like real empirical studies (instead of just theoretical arguments) have been pretty inconclusive. And overall, the point is that you can't just let people create a massive loophole in that law by just deciding not to pay people at all. Secondly, from a simple ethical standpoint, unpaid internships privilege people who are already well enough off to be able to give their labor away for free (i.e. generally middle-class or wealthier kids whose parents can support them). You don't get a lot of poor kids applying for unpaid internships at age 20 or 22 because, guess what, they need those 40+ hours a week to actually earn an income. So the tradition of unpaid internships in certain traditionally white-collar industries tends to be a subtle form of class discrimination. And recasting it as a "volunteer" thing is also a total cop-out: you volunteer for a non-profit charity, not a for-profit corporation.
- apotheon 17y ago
  > You can argue about the efficacy of minimum wage laws, but it seems like real empirical studies (instead of just theoretical arguments) have been pretty inconclusive. Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. > And overall, the point is that you can't just let people create a massive loophole in that law by just deciding not to pay people at all. I, for one, don't have any problem with people finding "loopholes" in bad laws. > So the tradition of unpaid internships in certain traditionally white-collar industries tends to be a subtle form of class discrimination. Class warfare? Seriously . . . ?
  - akeefer 17y ago
    "A subtle form of class discrimination" is a far cry from "class warfare." I'm saying that, ethically speaking, unpaid internships help to further close off certain careers to people who are traditionally disadvantaged by giving opportunities to get ahead to people who are already traditionally more advantaged. If you disagree with that logic, that's fine: just explain how I'm wrong instead of just dismissing it.
    - apotheon 17y ago
      I disagree with the idea that the possibility that one set of people might be more "advantaged" than another is good justification for ensuring nobody gets a leg up. . . . and claiming otherwise, specifically when those sets of people are identified by social or economic class, is pretty much "code smell" for "class warfare".
- cwan 17y ago
  So then what you're arguing then is society is better off for there not to have any work being done at all - essentially what Mark Cuban's concluding statement is: for the "benefit" of the exploited intern, we would rather they sit at home rather than gain any experience at the risk that the experience is useless? What does it matter if the firm is for profit or not for profit/charity/government agency in the first place? So charities couldn't possibly exploit the poor/their workers? By this logic, should we ban or let government set prices on everything? After all, any free giveaways causes pressure on substitutes to go down in value. So by setting a price on a good or service which is below what some other guy has, you're essentially being "exploited". Class discrimination? Right, so you're arguing that it's not fair that "middle-class or wealthier kids whose parents can support them" have the privilege of unpaid internships so this practice should be stopped? As for empirical studies, the problem is that it's very difficult to isolate the variables but when it comes to understanding simple price floors and price ceilings, it's a pretty simple, conclusive relationship. Further, the studies are pretty clear in my books with the overwhelming evidence of cause and effect of minimum wages (sure there are those that are inconclusive, but if you're looking for a "scientific consensus" - you won't find the average economist saying that it's inconclusive unless they happen to work for a union): http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/50years.htm http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/50years.htm
timr 17y ago
"Value is subjective - so in the end, why would we rely on the government to establish value in the first place?" We don't. The government takes the logical position that all such internships are illegal, so regulators don't need to make that subjective judgment. In this light, the answer to your second question is "yes" -- the government is erring on the side of worker safety. It's a judgment call, and you can disagree with it, but both sides of the debate have perfectly reasonable arguments.
- apotheon 17y ago
  I find it disturbing that when "both sides of the debate have perfectly reasonable arguments" the knee-jerk response is "Let's regulate the fuck out of it!"
  - timr 17y ago
    It's not a knee-jerk response. For future reference, a good indication of a knee-jerk response is a remark that reduces an opponent's arguments to seven-word soundbites involving profanity.
    - apotheon 17y ago
      > It's not a knee-jerk response. How else would you describe a response that doesn't even take into account the possibility that one could avoid government regulation when there's apparently no solid proof that regulation is better than the lack of regulation? It sounds like a knee-jerk response to me. Why don't you default to "We shouldn't spend a bunch of extra money on regulation when we don't have any reason to believe regulation will help, or even won't hurt!" instead? If you have some meaningful, reasonable explanation for that choice, I guess I might have been mistaken about the idea that it's a knee-jerk response, but you haven't shared any reasons so far, and there aren't any obvious explanations for why wasting resources on regulation that might just make things worse is better than avoiding that regulation.
      - timr 17y ago
rapind 17y ago
I thought I did explain my opinion, but yes you've stated it much more succinctly than I have. I believe the law protects people (specifically young people starting their careers) from exploitive practices. It also hurts them by penalizing non-exploitive and beneficial practices. I personally beleive the protection outweighs the potential benefits in this law, and thus agree with this law. Is this a little big brother'ish? Perhaps, but nonetheless I would vote in favour of it.
- cwan 17y ago
  Can you provide an example where you would see a young person starting their career would find themselves worse off by accepting an unpaid internship? I presume you accept that the young person would only do so if (a) they weren't able to find a paid position, or (b) the experience they believed they could get would exceed the pay they could get elsewhere - and presumably therefore would result in future benefits?
  - rapind 17y ago
    Actually I don't think everyone starting out has those same priorities. I think many would go for the carrot, as I most likely would have if I'd been unable to find paying work fresh out of school. If a telemarketing firm had approached me for a free internship with the promise of riches once I put in my time, I may very well have turned down paying positions at McDonald's etc. I'm not trying to say most of us are dumb coming out of school, but I do believe that the fake pot of gold is pretty appealing and that there are many ethically questionable companies who would make all kinds of promises if it would benefit their bottom line. I think the system where these companies are forced to act at least somewhat ethically by paying a minimum wage is a good system. I think there is and should be a line though. If you are unable to value your work properly, young or old, then maybe you simply don't deserve to make more than minimum wage. I don't think society should pay for your bad decisions beyond a certain point. However, I like that you can still at least make some sort of living, and I think the company that is benefiting from your poor decision making skills should be footing that bill, and not tax payers. It would be infuriating to pay a wellfare tax while the persons receiving the benefit of that tax are passing it on to companies where they are working for free. A company could get an extremely discounted rate for certain services if they were able to hire free interns. Then to take it to extremes, if a publicly traded company could gain a competitive edge by doing this, then it's practically illegal for them not to.

byrneseyeview 17y ago

Since the gov really has no easy way of measuring the experience / networking compensation, if they attempted to, it would be to the detriment of the mojority of iterns, who would end up working for free for very little if any benefit. The government can't figure it out. Can the interns? If there's a huge population that's willing to work for free, and they're all undervalued, then a company that hires interns for minimum wage will be able to get all the good ones.

tnovelli 17y ago

Second that. We had unpaid interns at my last job, and their work consisted of telemarketing, harvesting email addresses, web form spamming, data entry. It wouldn't be cost effective if their earned even $5/hr. What did they get out of it... cynicism? What happened to paying your way through college with paying jobs? Kids need to put their bottom line first, just like employers do.

apotheon 17y ago
What were they promised?
- tnovelli 17y ago
  Ahh, good question! 3 college credits for ~250 hours. That's the incentive. One did it just for the experience, and regretted it.
  - arghnoname 17y ago
    And they probably paid for those college credits. A typical state school might put that at $900 bucks. Great deal huh? The unpaid internship thing is often a scam to get people to do just the kind of work you're describing. In companies I've worked for, I've seen it done. I saw interns manually 'cleaning' data in a way that could be entirely automated. I told my employer at the time that they'd never be able to keep up with new incoming data and it's terrible, pointless work. I also said I could automate it in about 20 hours of work. He said, "we'll put an ad in for more interns." Young people are naive, it's part of being young. It's unscrupulous to take advantage of that. Cuban could have paid internships paying at minimum wage if he'd like. It would still be far less expensive than getting actual professionals to do that work. His real complaint should be that he can't extract any real value for that work from the marketplace, because that's where his real problem is.
  - apotheon 17y ago
    Did they get what they were promised? If so . . . where's the problem? Is it that people just assumed they'd get more than they were promised?