Glad you like the idea. Looking forward to reading your draft! 

Also, people have to deal with the whole application process that repeats over and over. To extend your analogy: the customers who drove across town are also being asked to describe, in slightly different words each time, why they like tacos.

I agree, we are constantly being pushed to apply to fellowships or positions that the organizations know are already oversubscribed. In practice, the processes for determining the best candidates are not very good, and if only a tenth of people applied for these roles, the best of that sample would not be noticeably better. But this negligible improvement represents ten times as much time wasted by the community on application processes that go nowhere. And even from the perspective of a single applicant, those processes take a very long time. In fact, I just wrote an essay about how those applications could be greatly simplified. The solutions I suggest would not solve the problem (simplifying the application process will encourage more people to apply), but at least the process would be more respectful of applicants' time.