It could be argued that when it was initially written it was not as bad a law, but the reasons it's still on the books today come down to incumbent corporations paying for that to be the case to suppress competition.
We’re still talking cronyism whenever it was written, and we’re still talking cronyism whilst it remains on the books. Whether it was slightly better in the past is something you would have to explore through counterfactuals which is basically alt-history and not a good use of time, especially for so little of a point.
So it remains in the present that it is 1. cronyism, one of many thousands of forms of it in the country 2. stupid on its face and 3. basically indefensible, but people who have buy-in can be persuaded that it is very defensible.
