I've never yet had a quality tyre fall apart,delaminate or fail in fifty years
True in that if it did any of those things it was no longer a quality tyre.
I have had 2 Schwalbe Marathons fail through internal faults, slowly growing over the years.
Two Schwalbe Stelvios where the tread started peeling off the carcass (admittedly very old tyres).
I have had all of my Panaracer Paselas fail through sidewall decay, not one has survived to be worn out so far. Again quite old tyres.
What I was mentioning was that I'd rather have the best rubber up front where it's less likely to puncture or fail,because a front end failure is harder to control than a rear.
That can also be addressed by buying a much better tyre to use up front and using cheaper tyres to wear out on the back. As Matt pointed out you can run different sizes for 75% of the time and wear out the aged front tyre on the rear the other 75% of the time. I have different bikes, so the narrow from one is the fat on the other and the ultimate thin wheeled bike isnt a loaded tourer so is happy with thin front and rear, the worst thing that can happen is that we have to run a bike with the same size tyres once in a while.