But that is the right price to pay.
Right for whom ? It may be right for DAO investors.
But it isn't right for Ethereum investors, it isn't right for future potential Smart Contract consumers, it isn't right for the cryptocurrency industry in general and it isn't right for developers.
The very architecture of a smart contract blockchain makes the logic of the "Turing Complete" scripting language independent of the logic of the blockchain on which it runs. Kind of like the separation of executive a legislative powers in states. If you decide to p*ss all over that principle just to save yourself embarrassment and investors in a known risky asset from taking a haircut then you just kill it for everybody.
It's different if the remedy comes from within the logic of the DAO code itself. That would be appropriate because that was where the logic failed. But forking at the Ethereum blockchain level is just suicide.
I realise that only the DAO would be affected by the fork but that just makes it even worse because it shows that forks can cherry pick what contracts they want to immute. I'm afraid the damage done in terms of loss of confidence will be irreparable.
If that is bad for the whole crypto currency community, then would the bitcoin holders give some help to the DAO owners so that there will not be a hard fork?