It's because companies see that employees don't push back. I sometimes wonder if these moves are just as much about asserting dominance as they are about business outcomes.
Remote First and Remote Forward is the future. Occasional onsite FTW. Do work-resorts/retreats for a week a few times a year, you're good. Have the robots do the manual labor, and if they're still not good enough, well this is YCombinator's Hacker News after all, get to building and launch yesterday.