His feigned ignorance about the real meaning of the question he was answering was disingenuous. The point you more clearly make for him is a good one from a purely economic point of view. But since when is that what high performance bicycling is about. It seems to me this thread has moved on to how to get high performance without sacrificing reliability. Once you discount the idea of perfect reliability in any of the choices (as you say, "everything breaks"), and you still want high performance and panache, carbon doesn't look so bad providing it is within your budget in the first place.