I don’t really get the profit-is-evil meme. It’s true that Aristotle famously argued that selling goods and services for profit was unnatural. But I’d like to think we’ve reached a point in our ethical evolution when we can all agree that he was wrong. Profit is a signal to financial markets that helps businesses raise capital. Higher profits mean higher tax revenues. Stocks rise, raising the value of individual retirement accounts. Absent monopoly, or other forms of illegal activity, profit would seem to be an unalloyed social good. Not by any means the only or chief social good – but certainly an important one.

Yet the intrepid fundraisers are on to something. The anti-profit instinct not only continues to exist, but actually guides policy. Consider the contretemps in 2010, when the Department of Labor issued new rules requiring that interns should generally be paid for their work. But not all interns. The Fair Labor Standards act by its own terms exempts some unpaid work – for example, volunteers at food banks – but the Labor Department decided to add more. The department, according to its own guidance, “also recognizes an exception for individuals who volunteer their time, freely and without anticipation of compensation for religious, charitable, civic, or humanitarian purposes to non-profit organizations.” Lest the point be unclear, the department adds: “Unpaid internships in the public sector and for non-profit charitable organizations, where the intern volunteers without expectation of compensation, are generally permissible.”