The pretense here is that we actually know what leads to long term progress? As much as it pains people to admit it, short term results are often far more predictive of long term results than any other single data point.
Is it perfect? No. Of course not. But having a team that is just willing to show up and work towards a goal is such a leg up over any other thing that we know that it is painful to see it argued against.
Will there be some people that make progress in leaps? Absolutely. Most of that progress will be taken up and incorporated rather quickly in the places that also employ the teams that just show up.
The trouble is that making progress in leaps is often mutually exclusive with being productive in the short term. It’s hard to think big and plan long-term when you’re constantly overwhelmed with what’s in front of you.
Slow Productivity by Cal Newport talks about this trade-off extensively and provides interesting points of reference where real famous historical figures achieved incredible things in ways that would seem slow and lazy by modern standards.
SWE salaries are a massive cost. Improving productivity is one way of offsetting that cost. The examples provided for "don't care about productivity" are things like open office plans- where a certain amount of productivity is sacrificed while offsetting a different cost (building space).
Yes, it is fair to say that managers and executives do not care about productivity to the exclusion of all else. It's something of a pointless statement, though, as I don't think anyone actually thinks that.
In a lot of businesses you get praise and look important if you’re responsible for leading a large group of highly paid employees, more so then if you have a smaller team.
Thus the motivation is frequently to spend as much money as possible, not to improve efficiency.
If you improve efficiency then maybe you just get your team size cut and people ask hard questions about why you needed all those resources in the first place.