Frankly, the more I've read about unpaid internships, the less clear I am on my stance on them. I wonder way more why people take them rather then why they exist (which is obviously because of the former). The fact that so many unpaid internships exist is proof that there is a supply problem in a number of fields. I won't back off my statement that unpaid internships are huge barriers to entry, but I'll qualify it to say that were I running a business, I wouldn't personally offer unpaid internships. The evidence that I read seems to suggest that offering a low-to-fair wage for these jobs actually attracts higher quality, more diverse groups of candidates than unpaid positions, and that the interns are more likely to stay on with your company after the fact. What's the point of training a worker to work for someone else?

Like with may subjects, the older I get, the less I feel I understand them. I think there's a disconnect between entry level workers' expectations and reality. I think that if more kids got themselves educated, then very few would take a job with a media company that offered to pay them 0. I think the situation I find unjust is that it appears that taking an unpaid internship often doesn't increase one's job prospects, even though they're marketed that way. As is often the case, the more the worker can rebalance the information scales in their favor, the better. Sadly, educating oneself is not often a priority for too many people.

Business owners have an obligation to follow the law, and currently the law says that for a job that is not mostly educational in nature, the minimum wage applies. Seems like a fair compromise. Sorry I can't be more argumentative.