They want to force people to trade more and create opportunities for moneymaking by limiting supply (or rather limiting people able to supply) past the absurd prerequisites already.

Imho a little overkill, given the fact how much effort is needed to be able to craft the master recipes.
Also I agree that it feels like a design contradiction, if you take into account that the whole point of the system is for one character to be able to do everything IF the player dumps the time into the game.