Quoted:
I don't give a shit about V2 or efficiency. I want my feet, spine, and knees to last longer. After two years of running barefoot (five-fingers in PT uniform), I no longer have any pain from my sever Morton's Neuromas, right knee, or bulging disc in my L4. I can actually run a 5K without joint pain.
To be fair, the primary argument that barefoot advocates raise against "big shoe" is that barefoot or extremely minimalist styles are faster, more economic, faster etc. That's a separate topic from the discussion about impact stresses/transients and injury rates between the two styles.
There is some compelling anecdote out there about folks who couldn't run in shoes now being able to run barefoot. It's unclear to me how much of that may be due to the fact that they were in the wrong type of shoes to begin with or the placebo effect. I personally know a handful (less than 5) folks who have suffered injuries or were unable to continue running in VFFs or other uber-minimalist footwear. One of those folks transitioned from VFFs to NB Minimus and is fine. Another guy had a reduction in plantar fascia issues, but has had other bone pain from using Innov-8s and has moved to a Kinvara/Ghost platform.
I've moved to a less "involved" shoe and had fewer injuries, but I can't wholly attribute that to the shoes. I have also greatly increased run frequency to 6 days/week while decreasing the length of my long run as a percentage of my weekly total mileage (< 25-30%). I suspect that this is something a lot of barefoot runners also do, perhaps unintentionally. You can't run as far in a single session due to adapation, so they run more often and shorter, gradually increasing run duration. Just an untested hypothesis, but it makes sense to me.
Bottom line is "buyer beware". Minimalist or barefoot is not necessarily a panacea, but neither is it the root of all evil if approached and incorporated into training intelligently.