Let us go through the sands of time as best as I can tell and Im sure i got some dates and or specifics wrong.
1930's LMR is created for business use.
1960's GMRS (Class A CB) is created and is very popular among small rural business use. Ie Family Farms etc. Basically as a subset of LMR and then some channels absorbed into LMR (MURS started similarly but thats another story)
1970's GMRS business channel pair licensing rule established.
1987 End of GMRS Business exclusive license's and the channel pair rule
1994 FRS is created near GMRS for people who don't need GMRS and didn't want to pay the fee.
2000's GMRS/FRS combo radio's start appearing and people are using 15-22 unlicensed (who could've possibly seen this coming? ).
Early 2010's GMRS begins to become popular among Outdoors enthusiasts
GMRS communities start forming
Late 2010's GMRS linking starts occurring over the internet.
2012 UV-5R appears.
2017 GMRS/FRS combo banned, free band UV-5R's kinda dealt with from the FCC.
GMRS really takes off and starts to become Ham-lite.
2020 FCC realizes the floodgates that they have caused ensuring HAM-lite is an eventuality.
2021 FCC tries to clarify some rules/definitions to prevent it, its too late.
Whether GMRS being Ham-lite is bad or good im not going to comment as I believe GMRS provides essential short range communications, but; also always had the power and design to talk at least county wide. GMRS is also being less enforced by the FCC and being self enforced by users playing nice is telling me the FCC really doesn't want to be forced deal with GMRS.
As long as it continues to play nice and not have interference/nuisance issues basically how they currently treat Ham.
Combining FRS and GMRS led to this eventuality and not re-seperating the channels made enforcement extremely difficult and hard for them to justify.
Again im not going to pass judgement besides on the FCC's inability to achieve what they want to whether or not I benefit/lose from their mistakes.
TL:DR:
Issues stemming from the FRS/GMRS combo era mean that the FCC cannot enforce GMRS as strongly as some people wish and the FCC is hoping that people can be civil on GMRS so they do not have to.
Like all things in life:
Play nice, Work hard, Worry less.