before segwit spam had to compete with legit transactions for space. The witness discount was core basically saying "ok you can spam, but put it in the witness section so it doesn't bloat the utxo set.

And then taproot took out the witness limit and now our blocks are full of dickbutts.

Personally I'm of the opinion that if spam had to compete for blockspace on an even playing field you would see a lot less of it.

The moral of the story, especially with taproot, is that when you start fucking around with "perfect money" all you can really do is make it less perfect....

If it aint broken, dont fix it.