Of course there's another cost nobody has mentioned here.  Having all
of /bin and /sbin statically linked means that upgrading libc -- e.g.
to fix a bug or deficiency in glob(3) or fts(3) -- requires relinking
all of those program.  Which means compiling them all from source.
This begins to seem like a real (and quite unnecessary) pain in the ass
after a while.

It really seems to me that trying to second-guess the sysadmins and
`save' them from certain types of mistakes -- like deleting libc, I
guess, since that's really the only one that would matter -- is not
only a silly thing in general, but also a rather bozotic argument for
the current `please make all my updates more painful than they need to
be' status quo.