There will always be other potential physical keys that aren't on your laptop keyboard. You could just as easily say that you shouldn't have to use modifier keys to trigger Page Down on a Macbook Pro keyboard. Where's my Print Screen SysRq key?
Because those keys are not used nearly as often as escape. And because osx has a different keyboard shortcut for screenshots so the print screen key is largely irrelevant.
That kind of highlights an issue for me though. If Apple were really on the ball with macOS they would have a better remap utility built in.
Instead we have Karabiner Elements which has been of mixed stability in my experience.
Many times I've had it completely disable the internal keyboard on my late 2013 MBP to the point where I have to plug in a USB keyboard to recover or if on the road do a force power reset.
Escape is in a relatively terrible location as well, the default ctrl location is just as bad, hence remapping escape there isn't really worse than escape in the top left.
That's not an escape key. Please don't apologize for this.
I use vim and switch between a butterfly/touchbar Mac (work machine) and a Thinkpad (personal machine). Using the Mac keyboard has actually negatively impacted my typing speed when I use other systems! I remapped my vim keybindings, and now my muscle memory has atrophied.
This dumb machine has actually made me a worse typist. I am so frustrated.
I'm never going to retire my 2013 MBP at this rate.