Youre dead wrong here in my opinion. The risk of combat is MUCH greater as a non combat spec, because youre not set up to excel at it. If youre cruising around in high end cruisers with combat spec, you dont sweat getting blind sided by an enemy fleet, because combat is trivial for you. You've designed your fleet to carry capable war machines, and you've specced your character to perform like superman in combat. With a mercantile focus, for instance, you've traded combat ability for storage or industrial capacity. You live a life on the run in a hostile universe trying to make the next score without getting killed.
It's more risk because you've created self-imposed limitations. If you're going to RP a trader, that's your prerogative (the games lets you do this), but by no means does it have to be high-risk. My first playthrough was quite salvage/exploration-oriented and I was still able to hold my own against Remnant fleets and even a damaged battlestation. By your admission, you were "trying to avoid combat," which in my opinion, is ice skating uphill for a game like this.
It's not like going combat-oriented doesn't have downsides: you end up being unable to exploit the vast majority of the proc-gen systems and earning money becomes an issue late game because of the ever-increasing logistical cost of traveling to get bounties. Yeah, you level up faster, but once you're capped, there's little else to do.
All that said, I do still agree with you: there should be more parity, however, with so much of the game built around combat, weapons, loadouts, etc., all the other systems and mechanics in place ("window dressings") should encourage you, in some form or another, to engage in combat. Its a dangerous sector and running all the time, even if its possible, is going against what I feel is the fundamental core of the game. To put it another way, exploring should be fun, trading should be fun, salvaging, doing missions, etc. should be fun but combat is
great and is what brings you back. But different strokes for different folks, I guess.