Do you understand how rig work or nursing is? These are very flexible jobs. There is demand for nursing everywhere. You can be a travel nurse and go find work in HI or CA or Las Vegas right now if you want. Temp agencies that place you so you don't even need to really hunt either.
Rig work it is weeks on weeks off sort of deal where you then get off that rig back to, quite literally, anywhere in the world where you live otherwise. You could live in the middle of the Amazon rainforest and make six figures a year on a rig in the middle of the ocean (well, maybe US jurisdiction is preferred from a tax perspective for employer payroll).
I'm not sure I understand the point. The vast, vast majority of jobs simply cannot be done remotely. So I have little patience for the entitlement of people thinking they "deserve" it or yell about conspiracy theories about why it is going away.
There is a reason YC is in person. There is a reason why the top companies are in person.
What say you to the fact that there are companies that work remote today and are competitive and doing fine? Anomalous? Or maybe your prior assumptions need adjustment?
I'd say they are outliers.
They have been setup like that from the start and have a management structure that is fully on board with remote work from top to bottom.
Most companies aren't setup like that and don't have the people to make it work.
Why can't they be? Chances are in 1989, most companies weren't set up to work well with computers either. 5 years later everyone had a desktop an email account.