Your emotions are coloring your ability to seriously consider how the 99% of urban dwellers who couldn't care less about being able to fly RC aircraft would feel about them being ubiquitous. I don't need to anticipate a bike hitting me from behind on the sidewalk because they are illegal there, and in the street, I look around (horizontally!) like every other pedestrian. I think that you also fail to understand how things like space, privacy, quietness, accountability, and yes, aesthetics are shared resources in a city that have to be carefully balanced among ALL people, not just an emotional or sarcastic 1%. To manage those concerns take resources, like police, city council members, and licensing.

Perhaps you would volunteer to test and license every operator and RC aircraft in the NYC for noise, safety, and flight-worthiness? And to respond to all of the reckless endangerment complaints that will happen anyway? No? Then I guess it will eventually cost me money. And no, I don't think every future reckless operator of an RC aircraft will be dumb enough to record his face on takeoff. It would seem that being able to control them from thousands of feet away, operator unseen, makes it a little harder to police than, say, a hit and run motorist, and the police already have plenty of problems catching them. But perhaps you are ready to volunteer your time and money to solve that problem as well.

Many people choose to live in the suburbs and rural areas (many more than in places with the density of Manhattan, for sure). There are already many different opportunities for kids there that don't exist in the city (why, my kid would like to ride his pony and his ATV on the streets, and go skeet shooting! why can't he?) I shed no tears for the sad future children of Manhattan who will be utterly deprived of the opportunity to fly their RC drones down avenues with hundreds of pedestrians. There are literally millions of square miles in the rest of this country where you can do that at a fraction of the risk. And if their parent really cares, they can drive ten miles into Jersey or upstate and do it in a large open park, the way any responsible person already does today.