Hardware is always getting cheaper.
Losing data integrity and the trust/confidence of your users is extremely expensive, and can be fatal for a startup.
Performance is not the most important metric for a lot of applications.
I'd prefer the safe but slow 5 star crash test rated sedan with a good alarm over the race car that is going to blow up after a few races, in library terms.
Then don't use C.
People don't seem to understand that C is just a step up from Assembly Language. There are no "types" in the sense that they exist in higher level languages. And thus, there are no ways to check those types (unless you want to write a type checking system yourself). Lets not forget that most modern programming languages with type checking and "rock solid secure" libraries were, in fact, written in C.
This is a poor justification. A few years ago a house was a good investment because 'housing prices will always be going up.'
See, for example: http://blogs.wsj.com/informedreader/2007/05/25/a-metal-scare... which talks primarily about LCD displays (we're fast running out of Gallium/Hafnium/Indium), but points out that copper is likely to get significantly more expensive throughout this century.
That's going to increase the price/performance ratio of practically everything.
At the moment, both those prices are strongly dominated by the cost of processing, I would imagine. At some point, it could well be the scarcity you're paying for with copper, though.
Scarcity increases price, and two orders of magnitude is hardly inconceivable.