The web/web app paradigm isn't the reason Electron exists. Electron exists to poach web developers into app development, because native code and frameworks are hard. There's no technical reason why we can't go back to native apps, the friction is entirely due to culture and business, and an entire generation of developers who've never written a line of anything that isn't javascript or maybe python.
Also, being able to distribute and run software over a network is a good idea, and it's a logical progression of the purpose of the web, which is to allow open access to information and media. Code is no less a form of media than video, audio, images or text. A web that would let me read whitepapers but not let me emulate an Amiga would be crippled in its potential.
And that notwithstanding the fact that most "web apps" are just documents that use javascript as a front-end framework, and most people's complaints along these lines are aesthetic and emotional, rather than technical.