> If people were dead set against things like Meisterzwang in some areas it would not exist
I'll give you an example: When I went to a copy shop in Austria to have my thesis bound, the attendant said they were only allowed to do it up to 200 pages. Since my thesis had 210 pages it didn't fall under some exemption, and I had to go to a master bookbinder. The result is: Disgruntled consumer forced by law to pay more.
Your "in a democratic society, if it wasn't wanted, it wouldn't exist" is a bit reductionist. It's a very technical / niche kind of law making and is rarely the subject of public debate or decisive in an election. So it's easier for the CDU (in Germany) or the ÖVP (in Austria), to just give these people what they ask for and collect donations from them, than to stop and think about what's good for the economy and for consumers.
All the while these same sectors that enjoy Meisterzwang (the need to be a master craftsman, to practice self-employed) are the ones shouting Fachkräftemangel, Fachkräftemangel (labour shortage, labour shortage) into every microphone that anyone ever puts in their face. And that's another attempt to co-opt the government for their cause, which is to bend the supply-demand balance in their favour, specifically as it regards to the job market for people who will accept low wages, while keeping out anyone who might compete with them on a self-employed basis thus safeguarding their respective local monopoly/oligopoly/cartel. The net result is: no plumber, when you need one.
I'm a mid-career professional, researching opportunities to make a career change right now, in my forties. In Germany, bookbinding is one of the very few things I might actually be allowed to do. In Austria, it would mean I'd have to apprentice for next-to-no salary for 3 years with a master bookbinder, before I get to set up shop, which, at age 42 and with a family to take care of, I'm just not going to do. Anyone who actually cares about preserving bookbinding as a craft in Austria should be opposed to this nonsense, because it's making it impossible/uneconomical for most people who might like to practice the craft to actually do so. The net result is: the craft of bookbinding dies.
...and yet the spin in PBS or ARTE style romanticized documentaries is: "look at these people and their proud traditions! ...shouldn't that be the envy of all of us office dwellers."
> collecting subsidies
In Germany, except for the very largest cities, municipalities don't do subsidies. Their political currency is not money but re-zoning, parking spots, favourable placements of kids in those public schools which happen to be marginally better than the other ones, that kind of thing. It's precisely the kind of currency that doesn't allow for the kind of opportunism you suggest.