While I appreciate a small post being thrown on hackernews, this is just me free speculating, not a policy or project.
Like anyone else dealing with hard drives, the archive has seen that price rise dramatically this last 18 months. It is not quite dire. A whole range of solutions are being sought out and researched. I sometimes throw out a little signal here and there to find out if donating drives to a non profit makes sense.
But I'm not sure a debate on here is going to shift the needle to the situation.