I agree the dysfunction within the system can be manifestly unfair. That anyone can just bail on a debt without consequence is precisely the sort of dysfunction that motivates otherwise law abiding and moral people to bend or tweak the rules or their own morality to seek what they consider a more just outcome for themselves. That's a slippery slope and the evidence of how far some can slide is all around us every day. The law and rules a society live by, and the enforcement thereof, need to be sorted so that everyone in society benefits from the corrections.
Your friend's brother who died the sudden death didn't have insurance, didn't self-insure, and if he did either then society didn't have rules in place to see creditors were sorted promptly? That again is something society needs to correct if those rules were not in place creating hardship upon an otherwise innocent family.
I have always believed if you owe it you pay it. That is why with my company we tried to do everything by the book. ChapterS corp business license, insurances, tax accountants, WC on employess, unemployment insurances, the whole 9 yards. When you are trying to do everything right and then the government sticks you with something as unfair as what they did, then you start looking at it in a different light. You see everybody around you doing work that isnt going by the book and undercutting your prices because their cost of doing business is less, simply because they dont follow the rules. It makes you start thinking what in the heck are you doing. When you do $250k in business and Uncle Sam gets a bigger piece of the pie than you do, you start asking Why. When you see all the taxes and fees you had to pay just to be a business, it makes you wonder if your working on a fair playing field.
Going into debt is a cost of doing business. Not everybody has tons of cash laying around to buy new equipment when they need it. Most people cant buy their first house or first car without some sort of financing. I know of several folks, mostly younger people just trying to get started, that have a new truck or a new piece of equipment given to them. They go to work and are making money hand over fist, until that truck wears out, or that equipment breaks and they have to replace it. Then they go in debt and find out they werent even making enough to cover their expenses. If one is going to buy a piece of equipment, or even if its given to you, you have to be making enough money to replace it when the time comes, or pretty soon, your business will just die a slow painful death. If the business will generate the income needed to be self substaining, then the added debt isnt the burden one thinks it is, and whether or not to borrow the money to make the purchase the equipment shouldnt even be a consideration. If you have doubts the piece of equipment can pay for itself, then one shouldnt even consider the purchase. Of course its hard to really know, but if you have been in the business for any lenght of time, you should be able to look at your books and see if the income is really there to support such a purchase.
A sudden death isnt something one can predict, but one can take precautions in the event something like that does happen. When I was young with small children, I took out a death and disability policy. The policy was large enough to pay off my home and put me in the ground. I also had a small life insurance policy that would have left my wife with some money to keep her going for a while. It wasnt enough that she wouldnt have to keep working, but it would have given her time to do what she needed done. Those policies where not that expensive, altho the premiums did go up every so often. I just canceled the last policy a couple weeks ago. The house and cars are paid for, the kids are grown, my burial paid for, retirement checks every month, a little chunk of change in my IRA. I dont need a large insurance policy, even tho a large check would be nice and I still have a small policy on the wife in case she goes first.
