Just imagine someone in the supermarket following you all the time, writing down all of your actions. That's pretty creepy and that's why you have to give consent first. I have no idea why anyone thought it's normal when done online. Or to extend it to the offline world just because it's technical easy. That's all the cookie banner is doing - showing how creepy many companies are and how much they don't care about you personally.
If someone was running a supermarket and you came in day after day and never paid for anything, they'd get suspicious and probably follow you around all the time, too.
You don't pay for (almost) anything on the internet. Nobody does, because the requisite infrastructure doesn't even exist to allow you to pay for a page at a time. Until that changes, the creepy companies will keep finding ways to follow you around- both to earn money from advertising, and to ensure you're not abusing their systems.
