Question: In the near future the demand for resources only rises due to both a ever growing population, energy and resource crises, and rampant consumerism. Peak oil has been reached, scarce resources like platinum, silver, and other rare metals have been depleted on the surface, and the world is beginning to feel the more drastic effects of climate change such as mass extinctions of animals and strains of crops. In this rather bleak period the major mining companies looked to the seas to solve the mineral requirements of earth. While mining the seas isn't a easy affair the ocean's mineral wealth is virtually untapped.

However instead of using drones to mine both ores and the methane ice the big companies used mainly human labor (with drone assistance), but why? What benefit would human laborers in deep sea rigs have over a aquatic drone?

Note:

The population is fed mainly by cultured meat and indoor+vertical farming hence why the population is expanding even though the climate looks bleak.

Asteroid mining isn't considered a good alternative for earth due to the transportation of the goods back to earth. However if necessary the industry does exist (mainly for the initial space colonies)

The mines would be accessed by either mining ships or for the larger mines maglev trains connected to large underwater bases (with the tunnels dug under the ocean's surface)

Answer: 
The mining companies are being subsidized
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Drones would have been better value for money, but the government subsidizes human labor.
This is done to keep the population (especially the men) occupied and also safely locked away, not giving them a chance to sit around talking rebellion.

This is also the reason space mining is not favored: there are too many places to run and hide once the tech for space colonization exists.
Check out [Peter Watts' *Rifters* trilogy](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0765315963) for some ideas. He needs to justify a very similar situation, where workers are sent to maintain geothermal power-plants deep under water.

In short, **networked systems are no longer reliable**. The internet as we know it no longer exists. It's been overrun by a rapidly shifting ecosystem of self-replicating viruses and military grade AIs, developed and deployed by nation-states and corporations vying for control. The arms race between self-modifying viruses and anti-viruses has become so extreme that any data sent via the web is more likely than not to be hijacked, altered, or deleted completely. In order to operate with any degree of reliability, machines need to be air-gapped and completely autonomous.

People are expendable; the corporations do the math, and decide that habitation and life-support are cheaper than investing in machines smart enough to reliably do the job.