I'm not so sure it's a matter of civilization - it's more a matter of infrastructure:

The other piece of the puzzle is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Enforcement_Authority

Basically the government runs debt collection in Sweden. They have the ability to withdraw money from your bank account.

All of this is enabled by every resident having a (public) personal identity number.

Meanwhile in California people can steal from physical stores with impunity [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/HmOIQv0yu-U?t=480

This is a pretty common practice throughout the US. Some big chain retail stores will even fire employees if they try to confront a suspected thief.

It's generally cheaper to call the cops and file an insurance claim than it is to deal with worker's comp or lawsuits if something goes sideways.

California classifies this as "crimes of necessity" with zero repercussions and in many cases people defending the acts of lawlessness. In CA everything is upside down!!

Government run debt collection? Is this widely used by companies? Are there any drawbacks/cases of misuse? Does the government keep a credit score too?

> Is this widely used by companies?

Yes. It's a bit cumbersome, so there are companies specializing in doing this for small debts (say < $5000).

> Are there any drawbacks/cases of misuse?

Hard to say. My impression is that having one trusted party to manage debt collection makes it easier to handle the edge cases in a more humane way, but I haven't really delved into this area.

> Does the government keep a credit score too?

No.