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Comment by psranga | Hacker News Reader

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.

I think it really depends on the industry. If someone had offered me an unpaid internship for coding at any point in my life I would have told them no because I am aware that I could easily earn money or I'd probably be better off contributing to an open source project.

But consider the hypothetical in another industry. Someone gets a shot at an unpaid internship, they do really well, the company they are associated with gives them a recommendation, and immediately after the internship they get an offer for a position in that industry. Or: Someone does not get an internship, it is a competitive industry, the person ends up working an $8 / hr job for the next some odd years until they get an opening in the industry. It would seem the benefit to the unpaid intern could be greater than the benefit to the company.

Of course, there is the scenario where the person becomes an entrepreneur.

Coding is a much different situation in many cases, specifically because of the availability of open source projects -- which serves the same purpose as an internship opportunity sometimes. Alas, there's no such thing as "open source development" in many industries.

Even for programmers, though, open source development doesn't do everything an internship can do. In fact, some people have a really difficult time getting started contributing to an open source project without some experience working closely with other coders to learn something about collaborative workflow and code review (for instance). The exception to that is cases where someone lucks into having a local mentor to help get them over the bar to entry for open source contributions -- knowledge of how to review others' code, figure out how to improve on it, and produce patches for submission to the project.

Who are you to decide the partnership isn't equal? And just how does the internship law protect the little guy? By making sure she can't get valuable experience? Also, just because you don't understand why someone would offer an unpaid internship instead of a minimum wage job doesn't mean it's a bad idea. Should your ignorance be the basis of public policy? I don't mean to come across as rude but come on, I'm a grown adult and don't need or want your "protection".

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.

> 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.

No he's running a business with employees, some of which he isn't paying because they're 'interns'.

Why is tracking game reports or driving trains unequal, but sex equal? Similarly, why is using sex toys equal, but using colonoscopes unequal?

Maybe you could explain what you mean by "equal"?

> Hmm, one is an equal partnership, the other isn't.

Is it really? Is SM play "an equal partnership" between master and slave?

Uh, it's not like the "slave" is someone the "master" just kidnapped. It's an agreed upon situation with an established "safe word" the "slave" can utter at any time to stop whatever is happening.

An internship is just like that. The safe word is "I quit."

I don't know what else I would expect from a thread that started on such an idiotic statement, but yes, you can say that sadomasochism and unpaid internships are similar in that you can get out of both of them by saying words.

The point is that they are both activities engaged in by two consenting adults.

It's a common belief that one is not the business of the state, but the other one is. My question: what are the exceptions to the "two consenting adults can do as they wish in privacy" rule?

> My question: what are the exceptions to the "two consenting adults can do as they wish in privacy" rule?

(active) voluntary euthanasia is one, though I think it's legal in a pair of US states (Oregon since '94 and Washington since 2008).

I think he was talking about a "rule" of dominant ethics or morality, and not the law, with that question.

An internship's precisely the same. It's an agreed upon situation with an established "safe word" the "intern" can utter at any time to stop whatever is happening.

Simple solution - call the job a training course and charge the interns $10k to do it!

You still wouldn't be allowed to have them do actually useful work for you.

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