One distinction we might make, is between the use of buncrs and hazards at top-tier tournaments, lower-tier tournaments, and in course design for casual play.
They complicate the rules, with rarely-used parts of the rulebook. At least everyone pretty much knows how to play OB.
(Sidebar: I'll add the OB option of making the lie "closest inbounds" instead of "last inbounds", which I think is a great concept in some places but have rarely played).
For top-tier events, there's little issue. You can have a caddy book or detailed instructions, and expect top-tier players to understand them. It's a bit tricker at C-tiers, with a lot of lower divisions, and even more so in designing a course for everyday use.
Also, at Stoney Hill we have a couple of creeks where it would make more sense to make them casual relief, than OB. However, as OB, if you're inches inbounds on the basket side, you get relief to take your stance; as casual relief you don't, unless we flag or string part of the shore into the casual relief area, which we're not willing to do. So they remain OB.
I'm not averse to using OB in course design, but I agree that there are places where it's too punitive, and some of these other options should be used a lot more. Perhaps if they were used a lot more, the confusion that I mentioned at the start of this post, wouldn't be so bad.