Cheap mics can make great recordings. I have taped with my Busman's at shows with guys using Neumanns, DPA's, etc and prefer my Busmans.
The overall feeling on this board is that a $5000 - $7000 setup can't be topped and the ones who shell out the most make the best recordings.
I guess I'd disagree with you here. I think this board is very supportive of all tapers and people here I think do a good job overall encouraging people in the hobby no matter what price level they're invested in. (I also think that if someone made what frankly is a somewhat inflammatory comment as yours but turned around and said with rolled eyes that somehow these people with cheaper mics seem to think they're able to make good recordings, then lots of people would call that poster out.)
I'm sure I could be easily be put into the category of gear slut, and I've owned a pretty large number of different mics. Trying out different stuff is definitely part of the fun for me of this hobby. And especially with the availability of multi-channel recording, I've done quite a bit of controlled comps of mics myself, using a wide array of "cheap" mics and expensive ones. For me, while the cheap mics can sound very good, in the exact same circumstances, the expensive ones sound better
to me. The cheaper ones sound good, but the more expensive are better. And this holds true for even the very expensive over the expensive. (For instance, I definitely preferred my Gefell m210s over jwmod AKG 463's, and preferred the m210's over my now "new" Beyer mc950's, though I decided to sell the Gefells and keep the Beyers to pull some money out of the rig.)
There are probably tapers who just get the expensive gear and assume it makes the best recordings. But especially for tapers on this board who are very involved in the hobby and like to think about it and post about it, expand their understanding, share their experiences, etc, I think many or most of these tapers who use expensive gear do so because they slowly upgraded over time, not just to waste their money, but because they found the extra investment was worth it, since it sounded better to them.
Everyone has different tastes and hears things differently. Probably thankfully for my wallet, I just do not and never have preferred the sound of schoeps. And while I like the sound of DPAs, not really that much better or even better at all to my ear than my Milabs. I'm sure others on the board running their expensive rigs actually listen critically to their recordings and like the sound they get. If others like you are lucky that your tastes and your ears are tilted towards cheaper gear, that's great for you and your wallet, but that doesn't make anyone who spends $5,000+ on gear wrong. You're sitting there thinking your recordings sound better (to you), and those with the $5,000-$7,000 gear are sitting there thinking their recordings sound better. They don't have to be wrong for your to be right.