“Imagine,” said the London cabbie, “that Uber had been operating for 20 years. And I came along with my black cab. My product was less comfortable, you had to go out into the street to hail it and it cost twice as much. I don’t think I’d get many takers. My business is finished, guv,” he said. “I’m thinking about what job I do next.”

This is a true story but an unusual one. Black cab drivers, industry incumbents, are more often to be found insulting the ethnic origins of Uber drivers and the US corporations that have invested in the service. And Transport for London, which oversees the capital’s transport system, responded to the cabbies’ concern with the customer-friendly suggestion that Uber users should have to wait at least five minutes for their car to arrive. Riot police confronted licensed taxi drivers protesting against Uber in Paris on Tuesday.

None of this is new. A series of murals in Manchester Town Hall celebrates the triumph of economic progress in the 19th century: the substitution of machinery for the skilled artisan. One mural depicts my 18th century namesake, John Kay, creator of the flying shuttle. He is wrapped in a bale of cloth to escape detection as angry weavers demolish his invention. The events it depicts are apocryphal; the truth is, if anything, worse. Kay fled not from workers fearing the end of their livelihoods but from his creditors; his savings had been exhausted in lawsuits over patents. Then as now, patents rewarded attorneys rather than inventors.