It's to stop midrange threats.
No more, no less.
For spammers on other hand it's just a business, there will be no reprecussions like ever and we know quite a few big and legitemate companies who started their path with marketing spam sometimes using leaked email databases.
Doors and locks are there to make theft harder, more overt, loud, etc, and by no means validate when it's legit to be a vile thief.
Likewise, all spam is spam. The use of tools to make it more difficult for spammers to be spammers, is the same as having doors and locks. It makes it more difficult.
edit: What I said was, you clained they tried to justify it. So no worries, I was not implicating you.
Theft is theft, but for monkey brains there is huge difference between stealing someone wallet from a pocket vs picking dropped wallet and not returning it. So my point is that doors and locks work not because it's good technical measures, but due to how average Joe percieve social construct about them.
And for grey area activities online there is no such social construct because there is no percieved connection between bunch of email addresses and real people. Also in some countries it's totally legal to send you tons of physical mail spam.