The big advantage of simple carbon steels is
value. They're great at performing more than
well enough while being inexpensive to purchase as raw material, grind, and heat treat in a manner that gives suitable results at a low price point. Your bang-for-the-buck factor is excellent. Fancier steels have greater performance
potential but between being more expensive in raw form and usually being more demanding in
execution, it's easier and more cost-effective to squeeze value out of the simple stuff as long as the context of use permits it. And most do, including hard use environments. In fact, very often an ounce of operator skill/know-how is worth a pound of increased shock resistance or edge retention, and the ease of sharpening simple carbon steels often makes up for the only "okay" edge retention in abrasive cutting tasks. For some specific contexts, they do fall flat, which is why we have other options at our disposal. But for easily 95% of cutting tasks, it's more than good enough, and it's at least able to squeak by through 4.99% of the rest of it.
