Since the context of this thread is the oddity of the American system compared to most other western countries, yes, of course you can draw systematic conclusio

Since the context of this thread is the oddity of the American system compared to most other western countries, yes, of course you can draw systematic conclusions. Workers aren't systematically unable to get their final paycheck in most other western countries. There's a small flat corporate tax for this sort of thing, which addresses your point that startups would need to pay higher insurance rates for this. The insurance is run by state. The reason should be obvious, because you still want innovation and new companies, so it amounts to a net subsidy from big corporations to small ones. Unless you think unpaid wages are some big part of US GDP it's pretty hard to argue that the lack of this is some huge part of the US's success story. There's also no limit on working in a high risk environment. There's just a higher bar to being able to form a limited liability corporation. Sure, you can work with a bunch of people and if it all collapses none of you get paid, but you don't get to do through some arrangement that looks like a normal job. They need to explicitly sign up for that, e.g. as co-founders or through some other painfully obvious mechanism, not just some clause in the bylaws that nobody working at Starbucks is ever going to read.