Yes, but the individual that is being insured must be insurable and informed of the insurance.

Insurance provides payments for risk. Yes, everyone will die, that is a known fact. But to insure when they will die is not known at the time of the policy being obtained.

An insurable individual is one that passes a physical examination and does not have an illness that increases the likelihood of their early demise. Also, the insurable individual must create a "hardship" or "loss" to you. For example, losing a business partner might create a "hardship" for your business, so they would be worthy of insurance. A person you have never met, nor have any connection with on a personal or financial basis, is not a person you could insure.

An informed individual is one that is aware of your intent to obtain the insurance and you would need to obtain their permission to insure against their demise.

You can't create policies for gambling purposes. There must be an insurable risk and the individual must be made aware of the risk you are insuring against for you to obtain a legitimate life insurance policy.

In order to buy life insurance on someone else, you need to have insurable interest. A person has an insurable interest in something when loss-of or damage-to that thing would cause the person to suffer a financial loss or other kind of loss.

Typically you can own life insurance on family members and business partners.

Yes, you can purchase life insurance on someone else, but there must be an insurable interest. There must be some loss for you if that person dies which justifies why you would want to purchase a policy on that person.

One of the most common examples of this is between business partners. If one partner dies, the loss of that partner's income can greatly impact the business. Therefore partners will often buy a policy on each other to help keep the business going financially in the event one partner would suddenly die.

Another example is that parents will buy insurance for young children as a type of investment. In this case, there is insurable interest but more in the sense that you are financially helping the insured. The life insurance underwriters will only approve these policies if the policy amount is not too large and the parent's financial situation is stable. They do not want there to be any incentive to do away with an innocent child in order to get your hands on a life insurance payout.