On: We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything

[lorecoeur]

The breaker in this analogy is equivalent to rate quota limits, it limits peak throughput.

You can rack up an outrageous monthly electricity bill without tripping a breaker.

[josephcsible → lorecoeur]

The peak throughput does result in an overall monthly limit though. For a house with a 200A main breaker, that effectively limits your electric bill to $7,000/month, which is very reasonable compared to the tens of thousands of dollars in a single day that a lot of cloud billing disasters end up costing.