Should vertical spacing make every list point a paragraph?

Quite often lists in continuous texts are typeset in such a way that the vertical spacing between points is greater than the regular line spacing in the same text. Well, like lists here, at SE:

• just a sample point,
• look at this spacing above!

Although list elements are placed on a new line each, they still form a sentence, so increasing spacing between them breaks the logic 'text - paragraph - sentence - word'. Moreover, such lists are significantly less dense with respect to the rest of the text.

What is the goal of additional spacing in this case? Wouldn't it be better to make lists denser, so that text doesn't fall apart?