One aspect not well defined in the article is that pointe shoes for professional dancers are tailored items, needing to meet a very specific, individual profile. The shoes that many professional dancers use are hand crafted and heavily customized/made to order for each dancer, who then proceeds to make their own set of adjustments to the delivered shoe: https://www.freedoflondon.com/pointe-shoes/ Ballet is a high precision art form (think playing the violin with your whole body), with different roles/ parts having different requirements for shoes. The shoes are modified to fit each role, some needing a more pliable shoe, and some needing a firmer one. In this case the fact that the shoes can degrade and are able to be tuned/ molded to the need of the current production is a desired trait. However the takeaway is that it's a high precision, variable environment and shoes that can't meet the required operating window aren't useful (either from degradation or design, think tires on a racecar). In regards to newer types of shoes, them being more dependable and longer lasting also makes them less customizable by the dancer - improving their longevity fixes their useful window to a specific operating range. Many of the other arguments are indeed correct - however no product offers the individual tailoring a master craftsman can offer on a platform flexible enough for heavy modding that's better than the current favorites. Some generalizing on my part however IMO this is the crux of the issue in terms of resistance to adoption of new production techniques/ materials