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Comment by gonvaled | Hacker News Reader

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gonvaled

> I don't think letting a stranger enter your building / yard is less of a privacy / danger / noise concern.

Well, nobody enters without ringing, and I receive them at the door.

And danger: I'll let you know as soon as parcels or drones start dropping and damaging property or injuring people.

> If they're willing to pay extra for drone delivery, it's critical enough for them.

Exactly, that's why you need the taxes, to price in societal costs.

And make some deliveries drone-tax-free (blood delivery)

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While drones dropping out of the sky is indeed a scary thought, delivery trucks killing people on roads is already a reality:

http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2016/06/5-year-old_boy...

As for "pricing in the societal costs" - that's called paying insurance.

> that's called paying insurance.

Not really, because there are costs which are not apparent, or are a matter of policy.

- What is the cost of annoying me with drones' noise? I hope the government decides it is non zero.

- I do not know about drones, but I know about a past blunder: what is the cost of operating a nuclear plant? Now it is clear that it must include the non-negligible costs of disposing of nuclear waste and dismantling the nuclear plant. The operators of nuclear plants have reaped the benefits and left society with the costs. I very much hope that we are not so naive this time, and society is able to properly evaluate all costs, and pass them to the operators.

"What is the cost of annoying me with drones' noise" By that logic, you should be able to tax people for having children or buying a dog.

Having children and dogs is already expensive, and has other "opportunity costs" which somehow balance the positive sides, so that I do not end up with 3 thousand dogs and children fooling around my house.

All-included Prime Delivery with zero delivery costs (because drone costs will tend to zero, and anyway Amazon is happy to cover the costs because they save on other delivery methods), will have as a consequence an unbound amount of underpants flying over my head. So I need some externalities added by the government to balance the situation.

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