A solution to avoid declaring bankruptcy would be to sort by sender. Turns out even in the fullest inboxes, the actual number of senders is manageable, and you can easily select all for a given sender and flag (for stuff that does require actioning), delete or archive.
Ideally, do this in conjunction with unsubscribing from the associated list and/or create rules so that automation takes care of future emails of that kind.
It might take you a few hours but in exchange you'll get back a usable inbox that will remain usable in the future thanks to the rules you set up.
At the point you "declare email bankruptcy", you are probably already missing and not responding to emails. Rude or not, it's already happening. email bankruptcy is an attempt to keep it from continuing to happen, like it will if you continue on the course you are on.
Too many emails? Even in the "from a human, directly to me" category? Select all, mark as read, archive. If it's important enough it will come back.