I always saw it as a psychological test … they’re trying to find gullible, pliable individuals who can passably do the work and agree to be paid as little as possible and made to work as much and as often as they can.
A bonus for them would be actually finding people they could literally treat like slaves and not pay them anything.
If someone who has been in office doing their job for decades and still hasn’t changed much … why does anyone expect them to do anything different now?