"Product owners can replace planning meetings by simply filing issues in the issue tracker, assigning priority, assigning them to people, and setting a release milestone. People will know what to work on by simply working on whatever the highest priority issue is in their queue."
I hate useless meetings as much as the next developer, but there are certain issues that can be much more efficiently resolved if you have all the parties sitting around the same table (or video conference, for remote workers). Especially if you're working on a complex product where it's not immediately obvious how something should be designed or implemented.
For the record, I'm not a fan of daily stand-up meetings. Most of the stuff I work on is complex enough that there isn't that much measurable progress to report after one day. Day to day status can be posted in an issue tracking system. My theory is that the daily meetings were designed to instill an artificial "sense of urgency" in workers.