Ignoring your actual question; do you think it's reasonable that we don't introduce new societal rules as technology progresses?

> Is there any precedent for this? Have governments ever ruled on how people can use their computational power?

Yes, they have. For instance, the DMCA is a USA law which, among other things, forbids people in the USA from using their computational power to circumvent an access control system (for instance, by brute forcing a cryptographic key) which happens to be preventing access to a copyrighted file. An older example is that encryption within France used to be severely restricted (quoting from https://www.theregister.com/1999/01/15/france_to_end_severe_... which is from before the current laws: "Until 1996 anyone wishing to encrypt any document had to first receive an official sanction or risk fines from F6000 to F500,000 ($1000 to $89,300) and a 2-6 month jail term. Right now, apart from a handful of exemptions, any unauthorised use of encryption software is illegal. Encryption software can be used by anyone, but only if it's very easy to break.")

More generally, governments have banned inefficient light bulbs, appliances, and cars. Banning PoW ASICs would be no different. PoW on GPUs would be harder to ban.