I'm not saying it's economics in a vacuum. I'm suggesting that it is LARGELY economics.

There'd be middling salaries for developers across the country, and probably actually the bulk of the work would actually happen in say latvia or laos

Yes that's what happened and it's called offshoring. If you're in the US or Europe it happened to manufacturing too. It's in China for economic reasons. That doesn't mean there isn't any manufacturing going on in your country.