Debtors’ prison

It’s a concept from the old times. If you can’t afford your bills you are thrown in prison until they can be paid by hard labor. You essentially are made work off your debt to people/society in this way. This is a system that works in the past as people didn’t have the ability to get out of their depth in debt. As soon as you reached the edge you were thrown into prison, never to return.
The problem with such a system is that is is too draconian. You don’t allow a person to get out of debt by their own means – they are plunged into a working role that only pays minimum wage from which they are unlikely to emerge from.
The problem is the declaration of bankruptcy. You create a business that does not do well and you end up in more debt than you could ever service. A declaration of bankruptcy allows you to completely evade this obligation without much in the form of penalties. Granted you are not allowed to have a company for a period of time, but that’s the sum total of the penalty once you file a chapter 11.
Consider a mandatory prison sentence for anyone who has a debt after the final judgement on a chapter 11. I would feel that if they could convince a jury that they were capable of paying off this form of debt they should be permitted to do so – however I would not permit a lawyer into the system. They should be able to convince us on their own that they can pay the bills. Give them a period of time to be producing a reasonable return – based on the loss to the other parties.
Creditors should be allowed to clim their debts as is reasonable (as decided by a judge (maybe not the judge in the original case). But the long and short of it is that people who were owed money will not be left at odds once the business is restarted. I have personally seen murderous intent towards new companies prinipally due to the fact that the original creator is still involved and he didn’t suffer any loss due to an adverse judgement against him.