Bankruptcy

Hotel California

You can check out any time you like

But you can never leave!

Bankruptcy is the ultimate checking out of a game.  But some games don’t let you leave!

Wealthy individuals and corporations hate paying for insurance,  and may self insure because  they assume that they can pay any costs that insurance might have paid out.  However they object only to the costs.  Rewards such as stock markets gains (stock markets formed as a way to insure the liquidity of investments) are popular, as are corporate bailouts.   So clearly the objection is financial not one of  principle.  As a last resort, if the consequences become too dire, some think that they can always declare bankruptcy.  Bankruptcy is the ultimate walking away from a game.  But you can't walk away from some games.  The third law of thermodynamics is sometimes facetious stated as "you can't get out of the game".   A more formal statement is "It is impossible by any procedure, no matter how idealized, to reduce the temperature of any closed system to zero temperature in a finite number of finite operations."

This may explain why the wealthy are against Social Security insurance, oppose health insurance, and gutted the stockpiles needed to insure against a rare occurrence like COVID-19. They assumed that they could always declare bankruptcy, that is take the ball and go home. But bankruptcy requires that there are creditors and they pay your costs. If there is no one to pay those costs, then you can’t declare bankruptcy, get out of the game. Societies can not get out of the game, can not declare bankruptcy, and still remain as viable societies.