I think we have to be careful not to overstate our case here, because that can easily raise skepticism and libs love to nitpick shit like that.

It's not really that unpaid internships are intended to function that way (most of the time) -- companies just don't want to pay workers -- it's that they end up functioning that way. The end result is the same but the difference in intent matters, the same way the difference between bumping into someone vs. shoving them matters.