Who amongst us isn't "bought and sold" based on our abilities? I think the key difference here is the word "forced." I have an option as to whether I decide to work tomorrow. It could be that I work for a company that mistreats me, abuses me and degrades me but I choose to show up. Having that choice makes all the difference. Also, there's nothing wrong with unpaid interns.Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work.
-wikipedia
Exactly. You have a choice, after all. If your skills were valuable enough to be worth paying for, someone would pay for them. They're not paying for your skills because either you don't have those skills yet, or there is a superfluity of those skills in the marketplace. In either case, it means there is a long ladder to climb, with many other people alongside and ahead of you. But it's up to you whether you persist, or choose a different, easier ladder. It's not slavery.Also, there's nothing wrong with unpaid interns.
Really? Isn't that why we outlawed slavery? Because those with power used it to exploit those without? There are myriad examples of people not getting paid for work while others profit from it (i.e. the labor is valuable, but the worker lacks the resources to harvest value from it). Did the cotton picker's value to the labor market suddenly increase after the 14th Amendment was passed?If your skills were valuable enough to be worth paying for, someone would pay for them.
If someone's work is worth much more than they are being paid, the textbook says that in a free society a competing business has an incentive to profit by luring the worker away from the current employer with a higher wage. Here is a slightly modified version of istara's statement: "If your skills were valuable enough to be worth paying for, someone would be willing to pay for them." In this form the statement is not merely true, but tautological. How else would we know your skills are valuable except that someone is willing to pay for them? Surely not simply because some outsider who is not willing to employ you says so. None of this guarantees that any particular worker maximizes their potential income, any more than a given business necessarily maximizes profit. In a free society workers have the opportunity to maximize their income, by selling their labor at the best price they can get. [N.b. by "paid" I mean "compensated financially or otherwise."]Really? Isn't that why we outlawed slavery?
Someone around here said that slavery was outlawed because the most basic human right is the right of self-determination. Not simply because slavery is unpaid.
Well, you ignored my next statement, "Because those with power used it to exploit those without". Kind of a difference. Exploitation happens in many ways, and not just forcible slavery. If your skills are valuable, either someone is going to pay for them, or they are going to steal them; it only depends which method is more expeditious.
I don't understand what that statement contributes. We all agree that slavery was properly condemned, it hardly matters why.If your skills are valuable, either someone is going to pay for them,
and everybody benefits,or they are going to steal them
and we call it theft, and it is coercive and wrong by definition.
You have the power to go and train in something useful and desirable. No one is stopping you. No one has a whip to your back to force to to the office every day. Equating internships with slavery is just nonsense. And an insult to the many millions of people throughout the world who are still actually enslaved today.
I'm not equating the suffering of slaves to the suffering of an intern at Harper's. But to argue that the reason one might not get paid for work is that their work is worthless to the market is the only "nonsense" here. My point is that there are plenty of examples throughout history where this is not a correct statement.
I've not read this entire thread, so I apologize if this has been covered by others but, don't you agree that compensation or "gain" can come in many forms? Not the least of which are knowledge, ability, future prospects and industry connections? It seems to me that this is what is received (ideally) in lieu of cash compensation.
The problem is the amount of "choice" you really have. Would you have a few billions dollars in your bank account would you make the same choice? Ok billions are a tad much, let's take the other alternative: If you were paid a mere hundred buck for the same work, would make the same choice? Ok. We're going nowhere. The point is not about the amount of money. Is that the huge majority of people doesnt work by choice. The only one they got is between one company and another. It's kind of a forced choice where company have the upper hand, and can basically force intern to work for free: Not this particular intern (he can always choose to sell homemade pizza on the road). But interns as a whole. They can always find one ready to work for free. As they can always find a thenewsgreen ready to work for them, if you happen (I wish that for you) to make ton of money out of your music.