Hacker News Reader

> Furthermore even though these lasers are very cheap, by army norms, to fire, they're still 600$ or so for a single shot. So shooting down drones will be expensive. Far more expensive than the drones themselves.

What is the approximate cost of allowing the drone in?

View on HN

Depends if we assume they're smuggling or dropping explosives/something dirty.

Suppose they are smuggling narcotics.

Okay, since economics has extensively studied the effect of narcotics on the economy (which is positive, or to put it another way: people will work, even fight, for drugs), we can clearly establish that the cost of missing a shipment is negative. For the economy, it is actually better to miss the shipment than to catch it.

So allowing Mexican cartels to smuggle and sell, for example, heroin has a positive economic effect on society? I have to admit that's a fresh perspective.

But you neglect to take into account the perspective I mentioned. Heroin certainly makes money go round and therefore helps GDP.

We just, as a society, have decided that the social cost is not worth it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com