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host nations should not be provided with automatic qualification. They need to qualify through the qualifier tournaments, just like the other teams.
While this would be the fairest option this is never going to happen, if I am not misremembering there was a time in which the world cup champion was also given an automatic qualification to the next world cup so they could defend their championship and later this rule was abolished, and in theory it would make sense for the host nation to also be forced to qualify on their own, but this is about money, and if this rule was abolished all host nations on their bid to win the rights to host the world cup will ask for automatic qualification anyway.
It's a good thing that particular rule was abolished much earlier because if that happened now, especially in the next World Cup, it will be too unfair to the other participants because three national teams will be given the advantage to automatically qualify up until the FIFA World Cup 2023. Anyway, by now, we should be already accustomed by it as that rule was already a tradition these days that the host countries will have that kind of advantage. Even the other teams that are participating the said event already accepted the fact.