The 4% and Next % are available to the public. Anyone can buy them, meaning you do not have to be elite to wear them. In fact, I would argue that the majority of people who wear vaporfly are not elite and do not receive these shoes through a Nike sponsorship, meaning those people buy them with their own money.
The majority of the criticism against vaporfly, which is directed at the elites who were them, is misguided because that is not the largest demographic who wears them. Eliud Kipchoge will get more hate for breaking 2:00 for wearing vaporfly, then a non-elite will get for breaking 3:00 wearing vaporfly. That is because no one has gone under 2:00. Right now Kipchoge and possibly Bekele are the only two people on the planet who have a possibility of breaking 2:00 and all you guys want to do is talk crap about the pair of shoes he is wearing?
Nevermind the fact that Kipchoge and the NN running team bust their ass week after week, sacrifice time with their families, do quality sessions as a cohesive team, and are probably the most well-run, organized juggernaut in distance running. This is a revolutionary event and you guys are giving Kipchoge crap about shoes that could help him accomplish an otherwise inconceivable landmark in athletics. Letsrun has some of the most virtue-signaling people I have ever encountered.
When you are presented with a challenge such as running a 1:59 marathon, you do whatever it takes. Roger Bannister was a med student, he looked to science in order to break 4:00. Emil Zatopek experimented in training in order to break 29. If you don't want to buy the shoes, don't buy them. The shoes will not be the ONLY thing propelling him to 1:59. That is what most of you grandstanders are acting like.