Actually I know quite a few people in my unpaid internship (programming) who don't have "real" jobs and are not exactly rich either. What they do is learn the trade by day, and go home at night to contract out their work on e-lance or something. It's basically a homework assignment that pays for your education.
Well, that's a good plan. But it doesn't exactly erase the unfairness of the practice. Lack of sleep and stress will cost you both happiness and performance, though you may not recognize that when you're nineteen ;)
How is something consensual unfair? If a person places a low value on their time or a high value on the experience that will be gained, it seems like it might be a reasonable trade. This seems especially true if the person giving up their time isn't in dire straits... i.e. If you offer to pay pennies and breadcrumbs to a starving man, that might not be cool. If you offer a good unpiad experience to a hacker/designer who is otherwise darned employable, it doesn't seem evil at all.
If I lived in the Valley and had an opportunity to hang out at YC dinners in exchange for a bit of free work, there was probably a time in my life when I would've taken that opportunity.
Random other note: cool that you play the banjo! I've recently begun teaching myself the fiddle.
My response to this has turned into something the size of the Lord of the Rings, so I'll blog it instead of clogging this page.
I need to get back to practicing the banjo. Perhaps one day we can hold a jam. The fiddle is awesome; I recommend the works of Darol Anger, and if you're near the Bay Area watch out for his concerts. Get on the Freight and Salvage mailing list if they have one. (I miss that place, although they have plenty of equivalents in Massachusetts.)
It might not be impossible for everyone, but it's certainly a huge disincentive, and not everyone has the skills or energy to hold down another job that actually pays the bills, or to contract out. On top of that, many internships (like in finance . . . or least like finance used to be) would expect interns to work 60 or 80 hours a week, which would make any sort of additional paid labor basically impossible.
Just because some people manage to make it work doesn't mean it's not hugely discriminatory.
The thing that really galls me is that most of the time the companies that do this sort of thing are perfectly capable of paying their interns, at least well enough for them to eat and pay rent, they just choose not to because they can get away with it; there are enough college students trying to get a foot in the door and who have other support systems.
