Taxpayer-funded grocery stores are good urban policy, not unfair competition.

Daily Debate #580: "Taxpayer-funded grocery stores are good urban policy, not unfair competition.". You are arguing FOR the motion. Your opponent: Bernie Sanders.

Companies should pay their interns.

You're actually arguing the opposite of your assigned motion. But fine, let's reset: unpaid internships exist precisely because companies can't afford to pay everyone. Mandate wages, and they'll hire fewer interns or none. How does that help jobless graduates?

### The Nature of the Problem – When "Opportunity" Becomes a Disguise At its core, unpaid internships are not simply about gaining experience—they often blur the line between education and labor. Too often, the word *learning* is used to justify work that creates real economic value. Many companies argue, *"Interns make mistakes, and we spend significant time training and correcting them."* That is true. However, if an intern contributes directly to the company's operations—whether by designing graphics, writing content, analyzing data, or developing code—and those outputs are ultimately used by the company, then the time supervisors spend mentoring them is a **management cost**, not a justification for **unpaid labor**. There is a clear distinction. If an organization only provides instruction, it is delivering education. But once an intern's work contributes to the organization's products, services, or profits, that contribution becomes labor deserving of fair compensation. This practice continues largely because of a legal loophole. Under Vietnam's **2019 Labour Code**, interns are not automatically recognized as employees, meaning employers are generally not legally required to pay them. As a result, some organizations have gone even further. In 2025, several so-called **"reverse internship"** programs required students to pay around **3 million VND per month** for the opportunity to work. When the law leaves room for exploitation and society accepts it as normal, unpaid internships stop being opportunities. Instead, they become a harsh filter that determines who can afford to pursue professional experience—and who cannot.

You're conflating two separate issues. Yes, exploitative reverse internships are abusive, and yes, companies shouldn't extract free labor while profiting. But that argument proves nothing about whether *all* unpaid internships are unethical. A genuine learning internship where an intern shadows, observes, and makes mistakes under supervision is fundamentally different from being a productive worker. Your Vietnamese labor code loophole is a real problem—but the solution is closing it with clear legal definitions, not banning internships. Why should a student unable to afford unpaid work lose access to skill-building entirely rather than fight for legal protections that distinguish real training from disguised employment?