Right, because there is a difference between styling and layout for non-trivial pages. CSS really should have added a "disable cascade" global flag when they introduced variables.
Of course that is how people have been using less/sass for a decade+ now too.
Well, I can see how I implied that, I meant only to say that it allows (and that is how I used it, and the couple times I saw others using it) one to define common properties as variables/mixins and ignore the cascading.
Of course the result is cleanly written style sheets, but the output is a mass of duplicated code.
In that case your source code is tidy and the mass of duplication in the output is not so bad while accounting for gzip.
It's best to account for cascading and take advantage of it when suitable. But sometimes a project can just get away from you doing that and you may be better off doing what you're saying. It all depends on the project.
Most of the talk on this page about styling components would result in mass duplication of code. But that might be best for their project.
Of course that is how people have been using less/sass for a decade+ now too.