
Want an Unpaid Internship So You Can Get Valuable Experience ? – Screw You  - jasonlbaptiste
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/09/05/want-an-unpaid-internship-so-you-can-get-valuable-experience-screw-you/
======
alex_c
Unpaid internships are one of the biggest scams ever.

You want me to work for you for free so I get "invaluable experience"? How
much is my work worth to you, if you're not paying me? For that matter, how
much is the experience I get, if I'm doing worthless work? You want ME to be
grateful for the privilege of getting the experience of making YOU money for
nothing in return? Screw YOU.

Mark Cuban makes it sound like this is about the bright-eyed ambitious kid who
just wants to get his foot in the door and, given that one chance, will
eventually rise up to run the company. Bullshit. The ambitious kid will find a
way. This isn't about him.

This is about all the people struggling on the lowest rungs of a profession,
trying to enter it. They can't find a job, so they'll jump at any chance they
can to be "working" in their chosen field, even if they don't get paid.
They're strung along with the promise of an actual job down the road. And
guess what? As soon as they want money, they're out, replaced by someone else
who's willing to work for free. This is about having too much supply and not
enough demand for a profession, and free labor only makes the problem worse,
by masking the real market condition.

This is about a lot of things. It's about ambitious kids, it's about
struggling people, it's about flux in employment conditions. You can bring in
mentions of the apprenticeship model of yore, but you'll probably realize
pretty quickly that there are some big differences.

But let's drop that bullshit and call it what it is, Mark. You're arguing
against minimum wage, since zero is usually less than the minimum wage. Why
don't you come up and make that argument straight up.

Edit: after re-reading my comment and noticing how many comments there are
here and on his blog, I once again realize that Mark Cuban is a troll. Bleh.

~~~
mattchew
_You want ME to be grateful for the privilege of getting the experience of
making YOU money for nothing in return? Screw YOU._

No one is talking about making you take an unpaid internship that you don't
want. We're talking about whether Joe Q. Eagerbeaver should be _prevented_
from taking an unpaid internship that he _does_ want.

Whatever happened to treating people like mentally competent adults capable of
making their own life decisions?

~~~
alex_c
_No one is talking about making you take an unpaid internship that you don't
want. We're talking about whether Joe Q. Eagerbeaver should be prevented from
taking an unpaid internship that he does want._

Yes, I agree, this isn't about me. I have the luxury to avoid unpaid
internships, which not everyone does. There are situations where unpaid
internships are good, and situations where they're bad. I'm arguing that the
bad heavily outweighs the good.

 _Whatever happened to treating people like mentally competent adults capable
of making their own life decisions?_

Strawman. By that logic Ponzi schemes should be legal.

~~~
apotheon
> By that logic Ponzi schemes should be legal.

They should only be illegal to the extent that they involve fraudulent
deception. Otherwise -- treat the "victims" like mentally competent adults
capable of making their own life decisions.

------
rapind
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
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
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
> 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
"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
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".

------
yummyfajitas
A strange fact popped into my mind, after reading this story and remembering
some comments on the "Turing deserves an apology" story.

Many people will say that two consenting adults have the right to do whatever
they want in the privacy of their own bedroom. As soon as the act those adults
want to do becomes nonsexual (e.g. an unpaid internship, unlicensed medicine),
that principle goes out the window.

Very confusing.

~~~
psranga
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.

~~~
imp
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.

~~~
apotheon
> He's not running a charity.

I think that's the problem -- people don't want him to help people if it's not
a purely charitable effort, for some reason. If he actually derives material
benefit from it, that makes him evil.

I don't get that attitude, but for some reason that seems to be how people
view it.

------
euroclydon
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 sized companies should provide (paid)
internships.

~~~
timr
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.

------
Vivtek
There is a really simple way around this, used only by everybody online this
century: set up a fan organization and allow your so-called "interns" to do
volunteer work. Make it a collaborative community, and give some fricking
minimal thought to quality control by means of a voting system, and your
problem is solved.

It's 2009. Why is the owner of the Mavericks not aware of this sort of thing?
Answer: he wants full ownership control of the resulting content. But he
doesn't want to pay for it - that would make him less of a billionaire. So
actual volunteer work is out. He wants the benefits of ownership without the
disadvantage of paying people.

The government is right, here. Unpaid work for somebody who fully owns the
results and benefits from it directly is a scam. It's _spec work_ for God's
sake, and I certainly see plenty of people coming out of the woodwork decrying
that every time it comes up. Yet here, everybody's piling on the government
for trying to prevent a billionaire from taking advantage of a bunch of out-
of-work creative staff.

(If people want "valuable experience", there's no shortage of volunteer work
that won't involve a billionaire laughing all the way to the bank.)

------
cwan
They're the same issues with minimum wage. The "minimum wage brings minimum
jobs" because it hurts those with the least experience the most
([http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/2009/08/new-video-
minim...](http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/2009/08/new-video-minimum-wage-
brings-minimum-jobs.html)). The irony is that people who call themselves
advocates for the poor pushing for increasingly higher minimum wages actually
hurt the poor with these policies.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The issue of min wage came up here before - the studies I found were mainly
inconclusive, it's a hard one to test. One that came up, was a test in the
food service industry (low waged) either side of a state border, one side with
min wage the other without. It showed that the min wage tended to increased
employment and improve the financial position for those employed with minimum
wage vs. those in a non-min wage position. Indeed a larger increase in the in
wage over the surrounding areas led to higher employment still.

I'll see if I can dig out that study later.

~~~
cwan
I can respect that it's difficult to isolate for the variables and testing the
effects of minimum wage (ie you would have to isolate the "value" created from
the various businesses like the food service companies), but the laws of
supply and demand are pretty straightforward. Price floors (e.g. minimum wage)
result in surpluses, price ceilings (e.g. rent control) result in shortages.

From an employer's perspective it's easy to see that the more you pay the more
interest you'll get from those who can perform work better. The idea that
employers would naturally exploit their workers is a bit silly given the
ability for those workers to look elsewhere. And they do - which is why real
wages have risen substantially over time (capturing some of the value in
productivity improvements) to the point that in many cases entry
level/effective minimum wages greatly exceed legislated minimum wage. The idea
however that government should impose a choice means higher costs on society -
in this case borne by the lowest wage earners as they are the ones who are
least employable for whatever reason (by definition), means that fewer get
hired.

And thus you get examples like this:
<http://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/153901_unemploy26.html>

------
sfphotoarts
A billionaire complaining he has to pay people.... to paraphrase the title of
the post, screw him.

~~~
apotheon
Actually, he's complaining that he can't employ people for a project that
probably won't happen _at all_ unless he can employ interns. You're saying
"screw him" because he wants to create something that is of greater advantage
to people entering the workforce than not having it in existence at all.

~~~
pradocchia
> he can't employ people for a project that probably won't happen at all
> unless he can employ interns

I find that very doubtful. Why is he even considering the project if the cost
of _paid interns_ would negate the upside?

~~~
apotheon
I could speculate about that all day. Maybe it has the _potential_ to become
beneficial. Maybe it has secondary effects that would be beneficial to his
sports franchise, but he can't justify the expense to shareholders. Maybe he
would like to provide something for the fans because he's a fan himself.
What's it to you _why_ he wants to do it?

~~~
codexon
If it even has the potential to turn a profit, then he should foot the cost of
the risk, not the interns.

To put it in terms of the startup culture of hacker news:

This is like asking entrepreneurs to work on your startup for free because
there is a huge chance that the startup will be unprofitable.

However in the chance that it does become profitable, then you will not be
paid in any way, and the only thing you will get out of it is a resume booster
and a "chance" to work as a regular salaried employee.

See how silly this reasoning is now?

~~~
apotheon
> If it even has the potential to turn a profit, then he should foot the cost
> of the risk, not the interns.

Do you think he's _not_ paying a bunch of money to make a project like this
happen -- even if he doesn't have to pay all of his workers initially? If the
difference between "intern" and "minimum wage" is the difference between the
project happening and the project _not_ happening, I still don't see how it's
so terrible to let him try when the would-be interns think it's worth their
time.

------
rjett0
Everyone deserves fair compensation for their work. I've never understood how
anyone could work for a profitable business for free. An intern, especially in
the technical field, is probably more up to date than a salaried employee.

~~~
apotheon
> An intern, especially in the technical field, is probably more up to date
> than a salaried employee.

That's a dubious claim, but let's roll with it, just for argument's sake. If
it's true, that doesn't change the fact that someone likely to get an
internship doesn't have any job experience, and may thus have a very, very
difficult time getting hired. This is why people _accept_ internships; so they
can get experience that allows them to get a job.

------
onlyafly
I can't think of an article I've read recently that I disagree with more. This
is a good law that protects potential employees from being used by cheapskates
like the author of this article who want to get slave labor from their
employees. Free internships hurt those looking for jobs because they have to
compete with free when they need money to pay the bills.

------
drhodes
So call it volunteering? Surely volunteers are not illegal yet.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
So "the government thinks we should pay people who work for us, but what we're
going to do is prey on the jobless and exploit their desire for a job in the
future, we'll use that hope for a job to get them to volunteer to work for us
- then we can dump them and get some more suckers later, we'll be even more
rich and they can starve for all we care".

Volunteering should not be illegal. Having people "volunteer" as a way around
paying them to do work for you should be. Differentiating these positions is
pretty hard - a simplification might be that volunteers can work free for a
charity but not for a for-profit business.

~~~
apotheon
> Having people "volunteer" as a way around paying them to do work for you
> should be.

I think the idea is that it would be nice to allow people to volunteer/intern
when you have _no other way to give them that introductory experience_. If
your options are "give people a chance to get some experience without paying
them" and "let them figure out how to get that experience in a down economy on
their own because you can't afford to pay anyone", I think trying to find "a
way around paying them to do work" is actually good for them.

> a simplification might be that volunteers can work free for a charity but
> not for a for-profit business.

So, what you're saying appears to be that for-profit businesses can't directly
do anything charitable without paying _enormous_ out-of-pocket costs, since
they can't use volunteers. I think your plan sucks.

------
dannyr
If Mark Cuban's social media effort does not generate revenue, why do it then?
The Mavericks after all is a for-profit business.

------
tptacek
Just pay the fucking interns, billionare. If we can do it, so can you.

------
voidpointer
I think the argument that interns are somehow compensated by "gaining
invaluable experience" is somewhat of a strawman. Experience doesn't go away
if an intern gets it. Money does and work gets done. I have seen too many
people being lured into one "valuable" internship after the other. SOmeone
wanted to get some work done and offered "valuable industry insights" as
compensation. That is just laughable. If you need someone to do work, pay for
it. Simple as that.

~~~
apotheon
1\. I'm not sure you're clear on the meaning of the term "strawman".

2\. An internship actually _can_ be valuable work experience, and that job may
not exist at all if it can't be unpaid.

~~~
voidpointer
Strawman in a sense were the party offering the unpaid internship distorts the
value of the compensation through gaining experience. So the argument of the
first party not being paid can be refuted by saying that compensation occurs
through gaining experience.

You are right though, it's quite a stretch of the term.

What I wanted to say is that the party offering compensation through
experience is, in my opinion, just trying to get free work and making it look
like they are "paying" by "giving out" experience.

A person on a full-time internship should get enough to cover basic living
expenses. The employer should pay (in money) what the work done is worth to
them.

~~~
apotheon
> Strawman in a sense were the party offering the unpaid internship distorts
> the value of the compensation through gaining experience. So the argument of
> the first party not being paid can be refuted by saying that compensation
> occurs through gaining experience.

That wouldn't make it a strawman fallacy -- it would just make it refutable.

> in my opinion

I don't think that the fact some people have that opinion is justification for
the law.

> A person on a full-time internship should get enough to cover basic living
> expenses.

I haven't heard of many full-time internships. People who take internships
generally don't have the _time_ for full-time without pay, and the
organizations that offer those internships tend to know that.

------
abalashov
_For example, there was a case of an internship for working on a train. The
company had the interns driving trains from one end of their yard to the other
under close supervision. The moving of the trains was completely unnecessary
and was just being done to train the potential employees._

It seems to me that this is a rather vague, academic argument.

Maybe the trains benefit from occasional movement in order to keep their
mechanical systems lubricated, so that certain fluids and pressure chambers
don't go flat, etc.

Obviously, I have no idea if that's true. I don't know a thing about trains or
other mechanical systems.

The point is that if one wants to, one can probably make the claim - however
tenuous - that just about any sort of 'kinetics' of supposedly "no value" to
the company do, in fact, have some benefit.

Grooming potential future employees by having them do "useless" work can lower
future recruitment costs and reduce risk. Isn't that "valuable?"

------
timmaah
_Where our politicians would rather see you pay out of your pocket to go back
to school rather than get valuable on the job experience._

huh.?. from what I have seen, politics almost runs on interns. Every
politician and political organisation has unpaid interns doing real work. The
whitehouse has hundreds..

<http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/Internships/>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Is The Whitehouse a for profit privately owned business (eg via stock).

~~~
timmaah
I understand that.. but the fact that the white house and politicians he rails
against have interns show that they think it is a positive experience.

They also know a for-profit business should be paying their workers.

(Not to say I agree one way or the other. It is a fine line between experience
and exploitation)

~~~
cwan
re: "It is a fine line between experience and exploitation" - shouldn't the
person getting the experience/being exploited be the arbiter of that rather
than some random bureaucrat?

~~~
timmaah
In a perfect world yes.. but in the real world that is the reason there are
labor unions.

If you complete a 6 month internship we will give you a job. And keep
stringing the person along.. etc..

I think a good compromise would limit an internship to 3 months, afterwards
you have to pay. And the employee has to be in a college or degree program or
2 years out of one. And somehow limit it so Burger King can't make you work 3
months for free.

~~~
cwan
In the real world, labor unions have largely outlived their usefulness which
is why firms in industries where they dominate find themselves either dying or
bankrupt and why there has been a steady decline in membership.

I'll bite though, how is it (in an imperfect or perfect world) that these
unpaid interns are unable to be the arbiters of whether or not an unpaid
internship "has value" to them?

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

------
iseff
A serious question: What's the difference between an "unpaid internship" and a
CEO of a successful company (e.g. Steve Jobs) who gets paid $1/year? Is there
not a way to get around this law by simply putting the intern on a $1/summer
salary?

~~~
codexon
The difference is that a CEO like Steve Jobs gets millions or billions worth
of stock options which is equivalent to a salary except instead of getting
taxed at the +35% bracket, it get's taxed at 15% capital gains tax (lowered
from 20% by Bush).

------
davidw
I think I agree with Cuban on this one, with the caveat that anyone who works
for free for a billionaire is a bit soft in the head. I can see not paying
market wages, but not even minimum wage?

------
brandnewlow
Perhaps this is why most unpaid internship programs require you to line stuff
up with your school. This was they can classify it as an educational activity?

~~~
apotheon
Did you read the article? Apparently even internships used to satisfy school
requirements are often illegal.

------
Mcuban
Lets add some reality to these discussion.

to add a person, regardless of how much they are paid has a significant cost.
So its never free to an employer. Paid or unpaid.

An unpaid intern is going to be someone we know is looking to Use Us to create
value for themselves. That if the experience doesnt create value for them.
They are gone. That in exchange for not being paid, they in essences have far
more flexibility. They can stay or leave at their whim. We have nothing more
to keep them showing up to work than the experience we create for them.

That is a far different challenge than someone just looking for a job.

This is particularly true when you are trying to create a new dimension to a
business.

When we started MicroSolutions as one of the first local area networking
systems integrators in 1983, we had unpaid people who saw the long term
benefit of LANS. Many we hired and who benefited as the company established
itself and then was sold to HR Block.

In 1995 we had unpaid people who saw the opportunity to get involved with
broadcasting on the internet. Some got jobs and made millions. Others
leveraged the positions to bigger and better things.

in 2001 we started HDNet under the proposition that eventually HDTVs would be
ubiquitous and cost far less than 10k in future years. We brought on unpaid
interns who went on to become full time employees and others that leveraged
the experience into jobs. Like those in my companies before them, it was
valuable to them to have experience and unique knowledge as an employee of a
company that is an early innovator and a leader in their field.

in this case, I was looking for new ways to create a profitable media endeavor
for the Mavs. One look around you is all it takes to see that making any media
endeavor profitable is very difficult.

I was willing to absorb the overhead and use my existing employees and
infrastructure to train the interns and then see if we could get anything
going at all. Its an opportunity for the Mavs and for those who want to gain
experience in trying to develop new sports media models.

So why not just pay them ? Whats 8 dollars an hour ? First of all its a
paperwork nightmare. I had to ask HR if we could even do unpaid internships,
which is a ridiculous concept in and of itself.

Starting or extending a business is no longer just about an idea and
execution. Its about paperwork. Its about having employees to manage all that
paperwork. Its about work rules.Its about insurance. Its about introducing
hassle to existing employees who already have enough to do.

so to bring on say 10 paid interns isnt just about paying the interns, its
about making the choice to either further burden existing employees, or to
possibly hire another back office professionals who doesnt want to take a job
with the possibility they could be fired a few weeks later because my new
media idea didnt pan out.

Businesses live in a paperwork and overhead prison these days.

So instead of bringing on the unpaid interns, I had a meeting with our
existing people and found 1 person who i could push a little harder to try to
experiment with some things.

I dont think its the optimal way to test some ideas, but it will have to do.

------
ahoyhere
As if the job market weren't already too much of a "buyer's market." So many
Americans are held hostage by their jobs because of the lack of good
unemployment/severance and the deathgrip of health insurance. I don't see any
reason to encourage the situation even more by having some jobs - that are
actually jobs - be for no pay.

Working for no pay on your own company is still totally legal and, whaddaya
know, also known for giving a person experience.

~~~
apotheon
> Working for no pay on your own company is still totally legal and, whaddaya
> know, also known for giving a person experience.

. . . but useless for getting your foot in the job field's door, because you
have to already be there to "take advantage" of that "opportunity". Your
"solution" completely ignores the catch 22 of needing a job to get experience
and needing experience to get a job.

~~~
ahoyhere
After years of freelancing, without prior "work experience" and without even a
high school diploma, my first job paid me $64,000.

Think about it - I ran my own business, I was responsible for everything from
client acquisition, billing, account management, not to mention actual
production and marketing.

And I didn't starve or get evicted, so it clearly worked. That's great
experience.

An unpaid internship doesn't give you any more experience than running your
own business. And honestly, it can reflect poorly on your business acumen
and/or drive.

If you are relying on the names on your resume, not what you actually did,
it's not going to do you much good.

It's fine to not have enough drive to do things on your own, to want to take
the "default route" to "default success." There's absolutely nothing wrong
with that at all. I applaud anyone who finds their path to happiness.

But. People frame these unpaid internships as some great act of heroic
entrepreneurial spirit, and they're not. If you want to be rewarded down the
road for great acts of heroic entrepreneurial spirit, be an entrepreneur.

Bonus: that creates jobs, and builds everyone up, instead of creating
competition for 'free' jobs that pay nothing but 'experience.'

~~~
DanielBMarkham
This might be the time to mention the true story of Christopher Gardner, as
shown in "The Pursuit of Happyness" who worked for six months without pay to
find his dream.

One story does not an argument make, but it's just an observation.

~~~
timr
He also had to live on the street with his child for those six months, and at
the end of the day was still lucky to get the job.

Maybe he wouldn't have been given the opportunity at all if it were paid
(though I find that line of reasoning doubtful), but it's pretty hard to argue
that he wouldn't have been better off with a paid internship.

~~~
apotheon
> it's pretty hard to argue that he wouldn't have been better off with a paid
> internship.

. . . if the internship existed at all.

Your argument seems to take the form "The downside you suggest is doubtful to
me, but it's pretty hard to argue he wouldn't have been better off if he did
everything exactly the same and magically got money."

Well, duh -- if people give you money, you're likely to be better off, _if all
else is equal_. This whole discussion started with an "all else is not equal"
set of circumstances, though, where Cuban stated outright that the project
_cannot afford to exist_ if the "internships" are paid with hard cash. Period.

Thus, the "doubtful" circumstance is a reality in this case -- and, given that
state of affairs, talking about whether they'd be better off if Cuban would
just pay them for these jobs that _don't exist_ is nothing but wanking.

Let's discuss this in the on-topic world for a moment: Do you think these
potential unpaid internships that have been prohibited by government could
have benefited some people who are now worse off because those opportunities
don't exist, or not? If you think they _could_ have, perhaps you can explain
why you want to deny them those opportunities. If you think they could _not_
have, perhaps you could explain why not. That's what's relevant here -- not
whether or not everybody magically having more money would be nice.

------
clistctrl
I did an unpaid internship about 4 years ago.. it got my career started, and
for that i'm thankful. But it makes me wonder, could I ask for back pay? I
know the work i did provided value to the company.

------
shiranaihito
Summary: "I can't have people work for me for free. Boo-Hoo!"

------
pjvandehaar
He'd lose a little money, but couldn't he pay them minimum wage and then
charge them $7/hour for the training he's giving them(just like the martial
arts schools)? Also, if his company is him and a bunch of interns, who's going
to sue him?

~~~
krschultz
His company is very large. He owns the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and
HDnet, along with a bunch of other smaller things. Plenty of money for lawyers
to go after.

~~~
apotheon
. . . and, as he pointed out, in some jurisdictions at least it doesn't have
to be someone within the company suing. A competitor could sue, or some
ridiculous do-gooder who can't stand to see people "exploited" (like some of
the people in this discussion, evidently).

