That philosophy would not last you the spring over here. One of my regular routes is bordered on both sides by swaths of goatheads growing 20 feet wide. It's rare not to see someone fixing a flat on the river trail. Where there isn't a sea of goatheads, there's bottle glass. My tires are regularly cut to ribbons long before the tread actually wears out. So it's either tubeless, liners, or Gator Hardshells-- in that order of preference.

The potholes are easy to dodge-- they're where the chunks of 50+ year old asphalt broke free, so they're usually enormous and easy to spot. But the roads are so bad in many places that cobblestone would be a welcome change.