The linux oomkiller also does what you are saying. If you are out of memory, it "randomly" picks a process to kill/eject.

People even use the same analogies. https://chase-seibert.github.io/blog/2009/04/23/the-case-of-...

I think a better comparison might be intentional blackouts when there's too much electricity demand. Nobody likes blackouts, but they are necessary to avoid worse problems.

It’s a poor analogy as you’re assuming that the result of the exceptional behaviour isn’t needed to prevent a worse outcome. Rolling blackouts are a better analogy - literally causing the power grid to collapse (which takes a long time to restore) is clearly worse than small, short, localized blackouts.

That’s why things like the OOM killer exist in Linux - there are times where the system as a whole is better off at the cost of a few random users odd processes.