Summations Only

Work has always been available to the unemployed; it's called "a job." The most convenient thing about this form of work is that once you get it, you're no longer unemployed.I assume each and every single one of these companies that employs people to do "unpaid work" has a similar program for "unpaid sales", where I can go in and take what I want for free?What's that you say? No, they don't have that, because they're a business and not a charity? So are the people they expect to work for free."Unpaid work." What a load of horseshit. Only in a world where we morally obligate individuals to work, but don't morally obligate corporations in any way whatsoever, does slavery look like a legitimate business decision. These businesses are stealing labor, flat-out.

"A job." That's what it's called when you have some work you want to have done, and you want to get an unemployed person to do it for you.If companies have a bunch of work they want done, and there's a bunch of people who want to do work, then I'm completely at a loss to understand what problem there is, here, that can't be solved by a process called "hiring." What on Earth is the need for "unpaid work for the unemployed"?

Not even close. My solution to unemployment is for businesses and governments who apparently have all this work they need done to hire the unemployed to do it.In doing so, they become employed. It's a system that has worked well for us in the past. I don't understand what part of it you find ambiguous.If a business is standing there saying "I have all this money and some work that needs doing", and a guy is standing there saying "I'd sure love to do some work in exchange for money", then what on Earth is the problem here best solved by demanding that the guy work for free? Why not have the business give the man some money in exchange for his labor? You know - that arrangement we refer to as "a job"? Why does a business need any work done that doesn't justify the expense? Like I said, "unpaid work for the unemployed" makes no sense at all. We already have two systems where people work for free - "volunteering", where they do so by choice, and "slavery", where they don't. If they're already overtasked, it makes even more sense to hire a guy, since now you have a "critical mass" of work to be done that justifies another hire.But the urgency with which these "unpaid hires" are apparently needed belies the justification of not hiring them. If it's urgent, that means the need is so great that the pay would be worth it. Not paying them is simply an attempt to steal their labor.

I didn't respond because it made no sense. If we have minimum wage then we have minimum wage, and it's against the law to hire someone for free, because $0.00 an hour is well below the minimum wage. If we don't have minimum wage, then there's nothing to stop the business from hiring the guy for $2.00 an hour or whatever. If it only generates $3.00 an hour they don't need someone to do it.And, look. I still don't understand the justification that looks at a situation where a business can't make money hiring a guy at 7.50 to do 3.00 of work, and responds by making the worker take a 100% loss. Doesn't it make a lot more sense to force the business to take a 60% loss? The business doesn't have kids at home and a grandma who might be eating cat food tonight. Non-responsive to point, so let me repeat - having a bunch of overworked workers provides more justification for paying somebody, because now you can take some tasks off of everybody else and have one employee do $10.00 an hour's worth of work for $7.50 instead of $3.00. They "hired" hundreds for the Queen's stupid Jubilee. Didn't pay them a cent. If they needed so many, if the need was so urgent, then clearly they needed it badly enough to pay - except that they didn't. They just stole people's labor.

Well, it'd be possible where there's no minimum wage, like in industries where tips take the place of wages.But, again - if we have the minimum wage, there's no way to have the "unemployed" do "unpaid work" for businesses because businesses can't hire someone at a zero wage. If we don't have the minimum wage, then there's no reason - except cheapness - for a business to pay a zero wage if they're getting valuable work out of the employee. Did you? When are you going to realize that the reason we're disagreeing with your arguments isn't because we haven't read them, but that we have read them and discovered that you're wrong?If there are fixed costs to bringing an employee on board to do work, then those costs are present - by definition - no matter what the wage is. Paying a zero wage doesn't eliminate those fixed costs; or, if you think it does, you've yet to explain how. Again, given a business that wants to increase its profits by having work done and a lot of people who want to exchange their labor for money, there's no problem here that can only be solved by "unpaid work for the unemployed" nonsense. The solution to that problem is paid work for the unemployed, who, by virtue of getting hired, stop being unemployed. It's a win-win.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

And so the solution is to pay them $0.00 an hour? Please help me understand that. Yes, that's the part I don't understand. The way we compensate employees for their work is with their pay. But you propose "unpaid work for the unemployed." It's right up there in the title of the thread. So I don't understand how it compensates anyone to not compensate them. I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm trying to get you to clarify your position, since it still appears to be incomprehensible nonsense. Since I joined this thread, I've asked you the same question perhaps four times now, and it's the question I'm still trying to get you to answer: What problem exists that is solved by making people work for free? The fixed costs of employment don't disappear at a $0.00 an hour wage - you've just explicitly agreed that they do not - so how does a $0.00 an hour wage solve the problem that some labor doesn't justify the fixed cost of employment? It's a simple question. Is there some reason you've been ignoring it? So hire them to do work that does. Again, I'm not seeing the problem solved by hiring people at a $0.00 wage. I'm not even seeing the problem solved by ignoring the minimum wage - if you can't justify bringing an employee on for $7.50 an hour to do $5.50 worth of work, then transfer $2 worth of work, or more, from one of your existing above-minimum wage employees to the new hire, and pay him $7.50 an hour. Then lower the wage of the employee whose work you alleviated. There may be a minimum wage but the only granularity in wages is that people like wages rounded to the nearest nickel.Look, I can't buy a 4 ounce Coke, for any price, even though sometimes I'm only 4 ounces thirsty. Coca-Cola doesn't make any money selling Coke in shot-glass-sized containers. But the solution to this problem is for me to buy a 12 ounce Coke and just get extra-refreshed. It's not to force Coca-Cola to give me their products for free. The problem of the fixed overhead costs of distributing Coca-Cola to consumers not being justified by the profit at such a small volume isn't solved by a zero price, it's exacerbated by it. Same with this "unpaid employment" nonsense.

Sometimes they are paid, and sometimes they voluntarily allow the company to hold back some of their pay and buy them something with it.But, look, you're still not making any sense. State universities offer credit at about $120 an hour, these days. A company isn't going to compensate $3.00 of labor with $120 worth of credit. That's nonsensical. A company isn't going to compensate $3.00 of labor with hundreds of dollars in health care benefits. That's nonsensical. A company isn't going to compensate $3.00 of labor by paying $500 in rent. That's nonsensical.At that low level money is the most appropriate form of compensation because it's the finest-grained - it goes down to the penny. You can't pay someone in a fraction of a "living quarters." You assert that they're being compensated, but so far the only "compensation" you've identified is "the opportunity to do work for free", and that's not compensation of any sort. That's theft of labor. It's up to you to identify what this "alternate compensation" is, and whether it's actually a good exchange for the labor received. The fact that the UK is forcing people into these arrangements indicates, in fact, that it is not a good exchange - otherwise they'd do so voluntarily, and we would call it "volunteering." The title of the thread is "Unpaid work for the Unemployed." Please try again. But such work does exist, millions of people in the US are employed in jobs where their labor justifies being paid a minimum wage, so it's clear that the buffoonery is your own, in the assertion that there are no jobs where the labor produced justifies the minimum wage. If that were the case no one would be in a job at all. Since the unemployment rate is not 100% it's obvious that you're wrong - stupidly so. Why do you insist on saying things that are so stupid? Again, the problem here isn't that we don't read your posts, it's that we do read them, and in doing so, discover that you're an idiot. They're employed because no one is paying them for their labor. Again, for the sixth time, how is that problem solved by having them provide their labor without pay? Well, yes. Many of your workers will object to the pay cut. Another alternative, if the problem is economy-wide, is to effectively reduce wages via inflation. In the real world, this sleight-of-hand is so effective that every economist agrees that it's the appropriate response to an unemployment shock.

Because you don't tell me how they'll be compensated. You've only told me how they won't be compensated; with money or benefits. "The opportunity to work for free" is not compensation, and you hardly need an unpaid job to get that - if you want to stock shelves and not get paid for it, you don't even have to leave your home.If you propose "compensation", and then eliminate as compensation all forms of compensation, then you've proposed that they work without compensation. It's certainly true that nonsense argumentation supported by zero evidence doesn't change my mind. Please don't confuse your own impotence with intractability on my part.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

No, not ever. Not in a single instance. Volunteer experience has value, and I invite people to volunteer. But unpaid internships and the like are always a waste of time. By definition they can't be giving you relevant experience: if you're getting experience doing work relevant to the paid position you're training for, then you're doing that job and it can't be an internship (because internships can't displace paid workers.) If it's an unpaid internship, then, you can't be doing anything that someone in the same paid position would be doing, and so you can't possibly be getting relevant experience.The third alternative, of course, is that you're helping the company steal labor by having you work a paid job without pay. But that's against the law, so you wouldn't be able to put it on your resume - how would you get a reference for that work? No company would admit to using you to break the law.

And the laboring party should not rationally ever agree that it is. That's not to say that many workers won't irrationally agree to work for free. But a contract entered into irrationally is, by definition, not justified.

Rationality is the grand definer of what is rational or not. Since I have a functioning brain, I'm capable of determining what is consistent with rationality.

And that something is... what, exactly?

So people would work for free because of the value of value? You're either an idiot, or you think the rest of us are.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

I asked you what they get in return, and you told me they get "value." Now you've given me a whole list, but let's look a little closer and we'll see how it makes no sense:Experience - you can't get this from an unpaid job, because if you were getting experience that was relevant to a paid job, you'd be doing that job and they would be paying you.College Credit - I mentioned earlier that college credit at a state university - usually considered a bargain - is around $150 an hour, so it's not likely that a business is going to give you something worth $150 an hour to get less than $7.50 an hour's worth of work out of you. As well, there's the same problem as above - if what you're doing at your job is so hard that it's the equivalent of studying something at college, there's no way it's easy enough to justify you doing it for free. Thirdly there's the problem where you have to pay to register for the credits so you're actually paying to have a job, which is just fucking stupid.References - references are people you've worked for, so by definition nobody at a job where you're not getting paid can be much of a reference. And unless you've done something really challenging - in which case you shouldn't be doing it for free, again - the "reference" isn't going to be able to say much more than that they saw you show up and do very simple tasks. You're just damning yourself with faint praise.Networking - a networking opportunity such as "co-working" costs on the order of about $30 a day, so, again, it's not likely that a business is offering anybody $30 a day to accomplish $7.50 an hour of work - they'd only just break even.Information - same as above. If it's not hard enough to justify a significant wage, the information you'll get from it has no value.So it's clear that you're just flat-out wrong, Jon. If there was intrinsic value in being employed in the top echelons of a valuable, esoteric field, we'd observe that the salaries and wages paid to those so employed would be lower than at the middle or the bottom. But instead we see the exact opposite - you make far more money as an engineer at Google or SpaceX than you do at Bob's Software. If the access, networking potential, and information content of a job made it make sense to work for free, then there would be no need to pay the people who run companies; yet in the US, CEO salaries are the highest in the world. There's probably no more valuable networking in the world than to know the people CEO's have access to - world leaders, celebrities, great thinkers - yet not a single US company has a CEO who works for free.There's just no reality to the notion that there are offsetting benefits that can justify working for free. Volunteering, of course, is something else entirely and that has ample benefits. But those benefits are not economic. The proof of this is that the best-educated, most-experienced people - who would be in the best position to assess the potential benefits of working for free - are, universally, getting paid for their work.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

So if you didn't ever get paid to do it, wouldn't that prove you were just incompetent at it?Ultimately it's a signaling thing, I think. You shouldn't be eager to send the signal to a potential employer that your work product is so valueless you'd give it away for free. Well, right. That's the problem, right there - you can't think of your career as a "route" that you're supposed to follow; where, if you stay within the "guidelines" you'll eventually just be given a successful, lucrative job. I dunno, maybe it worked that way for our parents or something but that's just not the way it works, now. (I have my doubts that it ever worked that way; I think people who say they got jobs that way actually got them via exploitation of trust networks - the "good ol' boys club.") If you want experience in order to be a more attractive hire then you should have the experiences not just try to convince someone to give them to you, or expect people to believe you had them because you did something completely unrelated in the vicinity of the experts.To riff off of CS's example, below, nobody's opinion of your photography skills is going to be improved by your "experience" of getting coffee for photographers. What's going to make people think you're a good photographer is a portfolio of good photographs you've taken. If you want free experience as a photographer, take pictures until you're good at it. Getting people coffee is just a waste of your time. Everybody says everybody is a dedicated and hard worker, which means that employers know to disregard any statements that the applicant is a dedicated and hard worker.People are sensitive to bullshit. I know that they are, and I know all of you are. They know when they're being bullshitted, or at the very least, if you're going to bullshit someone you need to be pretty good at it. Which means that your references have to be able to tell a very specific story about how you're good at your job - with examples - just the same way that if you were trying to improve my opinion of one of your close friends, you'd tell me about the time he worked a double shift so that you could visit your girlfriend in the hospital - instead of just telling me "no, he's a good guy."Employers are deluged by applicants saying what dedicated and hard workers they are, how their greatest weakness in the workplace is that they just sometimes work too hard, that they're "experienced" "self-starters" who focus on the "value-add." Maybe that's convincing to yourself when the only resume you've seen is your own, but when you're reviewing hundreds of resumes from people who all say what dedicated and hard workers they are, you have to look for specific, revealing information about who is actually worth a damn and who is just another phony who knows how to mouth the words. People know when they're being bullshitted.