A year ago, Daniel Bubb worked as a fisherman in Gloucester, Mass., operating a fishing business with more than 60 employees. Government intervention has a funny of way of turning success stories on their head, though. “I lost 95 percent of my business over the course of a year. All of a sudden, I was in a system that’s designed for the little guy to fail. The worst part? I’ve been fishing in Gloucester for 11 years – this is everything that my family and I have.”

The culprit is the “catch-shares” — i.e. individual fishing quotas — program started in May 2010 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Under the system, transferable vouchers entitle fishermen to a certain percentage of the total allowable catch of a given species of fish.