I read somewhere that when knitting was first invented, during the Middle Ages, it was illegal, because peasants could make their own clothes instead of using the loom owned by the local lord.
wow
Then later on there were Guilds that were like unions but even stronger. They set the prices and decided who could work. The Guilds in London elected the mayor.
Yes, and firearms were outlawed from war because a common soldier was able to kill a knight with one. That wasn’t fair, knights were supposed to be immune to any weapons but those of other knights. Outlawing them didn’t work, however, as history well shows.
Also, as someone pointed out, the Plague brought about both a labor shortage and a crying need for better recordkeeping — the town elders having succumbed to disease — which led to mechanization (and eventually strikes against mechanization), more production, greater demand for raw materials, and more and more Crown taxes on everything in sight. By (and before) Elizabeth’s time wool production was (in law) a state monopoly, even though it was carried out by people we would call family farmers or even entrepreneurs, the feudal system having broken down. Shakespeare’s father was a bootleg wool merchant, and got nailed for it a couple of times.