It's not even more economical than raising chickens. Just because raising relatively small batches of crickets uses less water per unit of protein (which isn't even necessarily a problem) doesn't mean that it's manageable at scale.

Moreover, as you said, bugs have to taste good for people to want to eat them. I was into entomophagy way before it became this sort of thing in the 2020s. As much as I appreciate it from a curiosity standpoint, the truth is most bugs don't taste very good. I think there's maybe one insect that I thought was truly worth eating again (sphinx moth caterpillars). Supposedly bee drone larvae taste good but I've not had them. Neither of those can be scaled for mass food production. The rest of the bugs I've had either taste extremely earthy or like nothing.

Civilization should just scale with how much food it can produce. The idea that food production should infinitely scale with civilization is backwards.