[lolinder]

Location-based pay is not the same thing because location-based pay pays more to people who live in SF but don't ever go into the office than it does to people who live somewhere else and don't go into the office.

Location agnostic pay comes close to what OP is suggesting: put your pay in the median of the country as a whole and pay that consistently to everyone regardless of where they live. The company saves money by not having to match tech hub prices, and there are tens of thousands of developers across the country who would love to accept a pay scale that's weighted higher than their local market by the tech hubs.