"A radio intern out here did five years as an intern before he got enough fame to get a stable radio gig."
First, what kind of background does a person come from who can afford to work unpaid as an intern for 5 years? Privileged, upper or upper-middle class - someone who got the internship because daddy knew someone who knew someone, and not because they had any particularly good aptitude for the job.
Meanwhile, the person who did have better aptitude for the job (and who had more self-respect and stronger moral compass) didn't even consider applying for the internship. There was no way they were going to waste their time working for free for a company that would be so completely morally bankrupt to offer an unpaid internship program to begin with.
Such a person started out working two rather mundane part-time jobs. You see, instead of mom and dad sending them to elite private schools from kindergarten through to university and providing for their every whim all along the way, this person's mom and dad were middle class people, who couldn't afford to provide more than clothes, food, and who expected them to pay rent or move out at the age 16, which. Well, upon turning 16, this person opted to do just that.
After high school, they started going to community college. This was the best school they could afford. Having taken out a student loan to pay for it, they had to work under-the-table, for less money, lest they wouldn't qualify for their student loan. Even working the two jobs under the table and the student loan, it wasn't enough to afford more than 2 night classes a week at a community college. And, just as had been the case in high school, there was no way they were going to get good grades - getting good grades they learned early on was a luxury afforded only the privileged, who, due to not having to work or the extra stress of providing for themselves, actually had the luxury of time to think and study.
It didn't matter, though, because the person in question wasn't expecting to get a better job after university. They were not that naive. They were not so naive as to think that there was going to be any more opportunity for them to really actualize their potential simply because they had a university degree; they were not so naive as to think that anyone but the privileged, upper-class, rich, people out there had the 'social assets' to get such opportunities after 'graduating'; they were smart enough to know that, inevitably, the system was unjust - that the system was injustice incarnate, perpetuated by the design and control of those who were the primary beneficiaries: the privileged elite, and complicit rich and upper-middle class.
For all along, unlike the privileged elite and complicit upper and upper-middle class, they understood that it was the poor and middle class who were ultimately fork the bill for their own oppression; they were smart enough to know such a system would necessarily thwart their aspirations to reach their potential.
The reason they thus tried 'higher education' was because they nevertheless hoped they were wrong. There was a part of them that hoped beyond any rationality that there was actually a chance that they might, just possibility, be able to attain a better life for themselves if they played along with the system. They were also sincerely interested in learning how the world worked. But all they ended up learning by their experience of higher education was just how fraudulent the system was; how the elite was @$%ing the poor and middle class with the foolish notion that a better life was actually possible for them.
After a couple of semesters, their suspicion was confirmed: the academic establishment - higher education itself - was clearly a just primary mechanism by which the elite and complicit upper-middle class maintained their social control over the majority; the academic establishment itself was clearly the most fraudulent aspect of the inherently fraudulent system; confirmed plainly by the FACT that they had been getting a better education by studying stuff online by themselves anyway, and by living life in the real world where people had to work real jobs; the fact that they had developed themselves independent of any institution of 'higher' learning and developed far more insight into how the world actually worked than they could ever get studying at any college or university.
Eventually, after getting a degree (if only for the sense that they would have at least something to show for all their denigrating, belittling experiences at university and for the sense that it wasn't a complete waste of time), they worked the same job they did while going to high school, and, moreover, for pretty much the same pay. They saved their money for a flight and found a job in a country where they figured there might be better equality of opportunity. Of course, it was to no avail, because the fraudulent system perpetuated by the multinational elite and the complicit multinational rich was ubiquitous. It was the same story in whichever country they ended up finding work. Curiously, it seemed all the economies of the world were suffering the same sort of fraudulent, malevolent mechanisms of social control.
Finally, as the global economy continued to struggle due to the elite's continuous sabotage of liberty, justice, and equality of opportunity, they finally got a decent job, with one of the first companies that realized that it needed to start offering paid training or it would go bankrupt.
Laughably, it is only because industry in general is suffering a skills shortage of epic magnitude (due to the baby boomer generation finally starting to retire and the epic failure of the education system to provide the skills necessary for students to succeed) that entire industries are starting to take upon themselves the 'burden' of providing necessary training ( a burden they had previously been able to pass it off to the public sector).
Yet, it is too late: an entire generation, two, even, have had their economic opportunity sabotaged by greed and ineptitude of the corrupt elite and complicit rich and their malevolent system; generations are left embittered and disillusioned, with no respect for the rule of law, no respect for civil authority, and little regard for the legitimacy of government of any form. And it is only getting worse, as they learn independently online from their own studies of history and current events how the system has been designed to do little else but %#$ them again and again and again.
What will they do, then? Will they become 'paid training whores', going around from industry to industry collecting training for the fun of it, quitting when suddenly a better opportunity arises, always taking the first chance they get to do get better jobs, and doing a little @%$ing of the system in return for having been @#%ed by it along the way, relishing in hearing about how employers are whining about high turn-over rates and losing their 'investments' in their paid training programs?
I personally, damn well hope so. Its about time the elite and the complicit rich were on the receiving end of a little of the @#$#-ing for a change.