Historically, most countries go through these cycles where we depend on immigrant workers for lower level work. We definitely profited off of slavery as well as

Historically, most countries go through these cycles where we depend on immigrant workers for lower level work. We definitely profited off of slavery as well as Chinese, Hispanic, and Irish (to name a few) workers to build the USA. The same is true in Asia where they depend on Indian, Pakistani, Filipino, etc. people for work. The same is true in Europe where we depend on north Africans, eastern Europeans, etc. As these cycles shift and those people become less welcome due to populism, immigration policies, and those people simply staying to work in their home countries, I worry that we'll lean even more heavily into systems like the prison system to provide workers for countries. In the absence of better pay or full automation, I'm not sure exactly who is supposed to fill those roles besides prisoners. It's a terrifying dystopian thought that your main motivator to not break the law in the future is to not be stuck in indentured servitude for the rest of your life.