I too belive that soft pliable skin is better than hard inflexible skin. Hard skin can crack which would suggest to me that damage can easily occur. For the first times for ages, I recently had a blister under each foot. It took me by susprise, I'd gone for such a long time without that type of worry. I did a good study of my boots in daylight yesterday and I think I may have found the answer to my difficulty. It comes under the heading of complacency. I noticed more than 2 years back that the outer edges of my soles, especially the left one, were wearing down faster that the rest of the boot sole areas. I drew the conclusion at the time, that I wasn't walking neutrally in my walking style, my feet were always tilting a bit to one side. To hlp me me, I cut the inner sole lengthways of an old trainer insert and placed each half underneath the outer edge of my Sorbothane inserts. As I studied my boots this time I realised that they were no longer there and I'd hiked without realising it. I can't remember doing it, but at some point going back to last September, I must have taken the inserts out and then only put back the Sorbothanes. The purpose of my half trainer inserts was to help tilt my feet back to a neutral position which for a long time for me, worked extremley well.
The only other problem that I could see was that my 'expensive' socks had compressed little bunches of wool about the size of a matchhead on the inner sole base area of my socks. Maybe this didn't help my feet either?