Airline ziplock bags for liquids aerosols and gels

I have always had issues with this requirement, for a number of reasons: (i) what must be the phenomenal number of transparent ziplock bags it produced, (ii) what must be the equally phenomenal number of "security sealed" bags it produced (for when you buy liquids at airport duty free), (iii) the inconvenience it causes especially if you don't want to have check-in baggage, (iv) the hassle of having to go find travel sized bottles of stuff to fit within the 100ml rule. and (v) the fact that I have never quite been convinced what exactly this requirement was supposed to accomplish.

At the beginning, my discomfort / annoyance was mitigated by the fact that the policy was strictly policed, and I always figured there was probably some good reason (that I wasn't able to see) for it.

But on a couple of recent trips (and probably for quite some time back now that I think about it) I noticed that airport shops were still giving out these transparent ziplock bags, but no one was checking and no one seemed to care that ALL your LAGs were actually in these little bags.

Which made me think again - what could this rule possibly have hoped to accomplish? Even when it was strictly being policed, if you had say forgotten to put a bottle of some liquid in the ziplock bag, it would show up on the x-ray machine and they would inspect anyway.

The only thing I can think of is that requiring people to put their liquids in this little bag would make it faster for customs officials to examine all your LAGs and make sure you weren't carrying a potential bomb. But since there is no penalty for not putting all your liquids in the ziplock, I'm sure a lot of people don't do it, in which case why not just rely on the x-ray machine? Second, why limit bottle sizes to 100ml? (the requirement is for LAGs to be in containers of maximum size of 100ml, and to be in a ziplock back of size 1L) Why not just determine the maximum acceptable volume of LAGs per person (presumably a bit less than 1L since you wouldnt be able to fit 10 x 100ml bottles in a 1L bag due to packaging) and cap it based on that?

Having said all that, I accept that policy setting (especially for something as international and on such a large scale as airline travel) is extremely difficult and you will never have something that everyone agrees with.

But now that the rule is not being strictly policed, why not just scrap it altogether.