Like all things in life, there are lots of sides and back stories. Most often, if a class has adopted such a draconian measure, it's in response to having too many races screwed up by RC errors, so instead of educating the RCs, they add knee-jerk policies which tie their hands. After a while, sailors get used to it, and justify that as the most fair thing to do ("If the wind quits, it's equally unfair to all").

People like paradigms. I love being told that we can't have downwind finishes for large fleets of Lasers or Optics because the sails have too many digits. Hint: nothing has more digits than a Hobie 16...

Mike