working for nothing

NORMAN BLOGSTER AT PARTIV has a brave and absolutely right-on post on the rampant and willing culture of free labor that plagues our profession. He uses Foreign Office Architects as an example, but we all know many, many offices that take advantage of young architects who often think that "internship" means working for free. I've always said that if you work for nothing, then you're worth nothing. And I've also always said that if nobody would work for nothing, then nobody would work for nothing. In other words, the problem is less with the individual offices that commit these crimes and more with a pervasive culture of complicity. Maybe if we all insisted on adequate compensation for our time, the profession would be better off. Has it ever occurred to you that the constant worrying over our undervalued professional services could be rooted in a much deeper, internal crisis of self-worth?
link: Zeroes of our time: Foreign Office Architects