Let's spell out the deeper reason: These people rely on personal interactions, charisma and the illusion of work afforded by on-site presence. It's much easier

Let's spell out the deeper reason: These people rely on personal interactions, charisma and the illusion of work afforded by on-site presence. It's much easier to identify the real workers in a remote setting. You can also see it in open source projects like Python, where always the same people go to sponsored core developer summits where nothing is achieved apart from showing presence, being in the in-group and gaining power.