It's not entirely palatable when you look at it as someone getting a free ride. I look at it as its more beneficial to put the money into buying back boats and allowing stressed fish stocks to recover, then allowing small towns to go bust or bankrupt, with the fish losing out as well. And the fish would lose, because without a reduction in fleet-size, people will try to eeek out a living for as long as possible, scaping the bottom, until its a desert. And although I'm not an economist, I imagine there are some significant costs associated with industries going belly-up.

Maybe if all those who didn't sell their dot.bomb stocks by 2001 were congregated in the same towns, the Feds would have bailed them out, as well!