Seems like a metaphor or maybe a reference to something real... maybe in the US?

[palominocorn]

In Pillars 2, one of the factions is headed by a Director Castol, who works with slavers to expand the slave trade. This is one of the facts that his rival, Governor Alvari, brings up to discredit him.

Alvari opposes slavery, and yet if she becomes leader (by your actions, for the record), she will implement a system of brutal labor that looks very much like sharecropping and the prison-industrial complex.