I would fully agree that if you are flying around a bunch of chimps who sit, stand, spill beer on the headset, and then use the cable from it to help themselves down from the footsteps
then a $100 headset is the way to go.
Similarly if you fly a PA28, where everybody has to climb in over the seats, thus standing on any headsets lying on the seats.
Which is why the flight training business uses crap headsets.
When I was training, one even had pleasure flight (oops I meant to say "trial lesson") punters
stealing the headsets
Not sure what they could do with them; maybe they got a tenner for it down the pub?
But if you look after your kit, there is no contest.
I do explain to passengers fairly carefully that the headsets they will be wearing are "extremely expensive" and I show them how to insert and withdraw the little plastic bose plugs, etc. It seems to work. But on the school/club scene they would not last 5 minutes.