The trick is though once you get to a decent evader level the differences in decay don't matter much until you hit the big animals. For instance take argos (just an example), I can stand there and it takes them two minutes to kill me if not longer unarmored because the small to medium sized ones almost never hit me.

Honestly, and Travis will choke when I say this, I ignore economy. And I think most people will agree it works great for me. I have incredible loot luck and even with almost a complete lack of regard for econ I virtually always make money.

A friend of a friend of mine had no concept of decay and would continually use equipment with stupid decay and he was unskilled for. Yet he would always profit every mining or crafting run.