Should unpaid internships be banned?

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Unpaid internships have become a normal step into law, media, fashion and politics. I agree strongly that they should be prohibited wherever the intern is doing work the organisation actually needs done. The central objection is not that the pay is low but that the position is effectively bought. Only a young person whose family can house and feed them in an expensive city can accept months without a salary, so the entrance to several influential professions is quietly reserved for those who are already comfortable. The effect compounds. A newsroom or a chamber that recruits from its own interns reproduces itself, then wonders publicly why its staff all resemble each other. There is also a plain fairness argument. If the intern's work has no value, the organisation has wasted everybody's time. If it has value, the organisation is taking it for nothing while paying employees for comparable output. No company offers its suppliers that arrangement. The strongest counterargument is that a ban would reduce the number of opportunities, and I accept that some small charities and studios genuinely cannot pay. The answer is a properly defined training placement: short, structured, supervised, and never a substitute for a job. Several countries have drawn exactly this line and their industries have not collapsed. To that extent I agree with a ban, and I would add that enforcement matters more than the rule, since the practice survives today in countries where it is already illegal.