Once upon a time almost everybody worked and shopped where they lived and all businesses were locally owned. Which meant that the owners had to live among the workers they employed and the customers they served.
It was not the invisible hand of the marketplace that kept business owners in line. It was the potential anger of their friends and neighbors.
They hand to answer to the local government, to the mayor and the board of selectmen, in the most direct way.
Business owners who in a too determined pursuit of their own self-interests made the lives of their neighbors miserable could expect to have their lives made miserable in return. A butcher whose thumb was heavy on the scale and who sold rotten meat didn’t just lose business. He lost standing in the town.
How consoling was a few extra dollars in your pocket if you had to hear yourself called a liar and a thief everywhere you went?
What good did it do to make enough money to build an addition on your shop if when you went before the town council to ask for a zoning variance half the town showed up at the hearing to see you didn’t get it out of spite?
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