I'm sure the person who grinds for two weeks to buy their Anaconda and then loses it will agree that there are no consequences when they get their amazing free Sidewinder.
You can buy a new one for a fraction of the cost via insurance. Further the credit retrieval in E:D is exponential. It takes a long time to work your way up to a Type 9 or Anaconda, but once you have one you can make bucketloads of credits in a fraction of the time. A Type 9, for example, can make about 200K CR in profit per trip (which should take 10-30 minutes).
Furthermore, one may only look to Eve (again) to see what happens when you make a free (or close to free) ship fairly powerful. I've seen entire swarms of "battle badgers" cost corporations billions because their jump freighter got badger'd.
A person who wants to go around blowing shit up is never going to get a slow-ass anaconda anyway. They'll probably buy a Type 9, use it to farm money for Cobra MK IIIs, then blow shit up using those. There is no real consequence using that strategy because E:D has no reputation system.