I worked for a few weeks in a company where coming to office was mandatory. Given the job we were doing, it didn't make sense. Until I learned that the boss was owning the building personally and was renting it to the company. Seen this way, it was much clearer why they wanted to have people in, instead of downsizing or just not having offices at all.

Good optimizers will not react to half empty office space by pushing for RTO. They'll react by pushing for smaller office.

So the problem that you pointed out isn't optimization as a concept, it's dumb people.

Real estate costs to 0, variable costs including electricity, heating, cooling to 0, health and safety, workplace insurance, cleaning, catering, security and other cost centre's all gone.

It's a beancounting optimisers wet dream.

then downsize your offices.. It is what the company i work for did..

They were already friendly with remote work before, i for instance have worked fully remote for over 10 years already.

Before the pandemic they had space problem in their San Francisco office, if you were not in the office at least 3 times per week you were at risk of loosing your desk space.

During pandemic when everyone was forced to go full remote and performance was not impacted they just moved to a much smaller office space and kept everyone remote.