It's not about expectation of work (well, there's some entitled people sure.)

It's about throwing away the effort the reporter put into filing the issue. Stale bots disincentivise good quality issues, makes them less discoverable, and creates the burden of having to collate discussion across N previously raised issues about the same thing.

Bug reports and FRs are also a form of work. They might have a selfish motive, but they're still raised with the intention of enriching the software in some way.