Ok, now what if I don't care about your opinion that they "should not offer any internship positions at all" and want to take the job anyway?
There are definitely points in my life where I would definitely tell someone who had an opinion like yours to go F themselves, because I want do make decisions for myself, and not have someone else get in the way of my own consenting decisions.
Driving 180mph in a residential area is not permitted in most jurisdictions.
You can decide not to care about the opinion of the legislative bodies that came up with those rule (and tell them to "go F themselves"). You can be the best driver and 100% certain that driving 180mph at this particular moment does not pose any danger. If you get caught, you are still in serious trouble.
The reason is simply that people have determined that, in most cases, driving 180mph in a residential area is not a good idea. Most probable situations where it might be a good idea, e.g. if you are doing it while driving an ambulance, are already accounted for. Not every such situation is covered by an exception, but the alternative of letting people drive 180mph in residential areas and sort it out for themselves does not work out.
If you want to live outside of society, in an anarchy where anything goes as long as two parties consent to it, you're free to move to there.
This is because it has a large chance of hurting people around you. not because it would hurt the individual.
> If you get caught, you are still in serious trouble.
No, actually. You will not get in legal trouble for accepting an unpaid internship.
My point being that your opinion is extremely patronizing, and that maybe you should let people decide for themselves what jobs that do or do not want to accept.
This is an especially important concept to understand, when the people that you are trying to "protect" tell you that they do not want your "protection", which involves trying to prevent them from accepting jobs that they want.
You seem to be confused who is being protected here. It's the people who do not and, most importantly, cannot accept the unpaid internship, because they cannot afford it. They are to be protected, not the affluent person that is totally cool with taking that internship slot because they have a steady source of income anyway.
In the car analogy above, they are the ones that have a large chance to get hurt by your driving.
And what I am saying is that I know multiple people, who were definitely not affluent, who fought hard to be able to break into the industry, and would be extremely insulted and upset that there are people out there who would have tried to tear these opportunities away from them, and probably permanently prevent them from breaking into the industry.
Just be careful who's opportunities and jobs you try to take away from people. That might have been their only shot.
That's under the assumption that the companies would not have offered a paid internship instead. And as said before, I don't believe that there a many legitimate reasons where a company that is able to offer proper internships is not able or unwilling to afford a meager internship salary if not for questionable motives.
(Also, what are you trying to do with the overly emotional aspect of bringing up your friends here? How is that supposed to work, should I bring up a tearjerking story of people who are "extremely insulted and upset that they were not able to afford an internship because affluent people would intern for free"? And then repeat your last paragraph, verbatim?)
There are definitely points in my life where I would definitely tell someone who had an opinion like yours to go F themselves, because I want do make decisions for myself, and not have someone else get in the way of my own consenting decisions.