You're confusing my comment with some sort of value judgment. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm just saying that some customers care more about reliability than cost, and those customers will provide a steady stream of revenue for ULA and friends until SpaceX improves in this area.
I have no opinion about what is "acceptable" or not, but my opinion doesn't matter. What matters is the opinion of the customer. There are enough customers out there which find SpaceX's ~10% failure rate to be too high to keep ULA around for now even at a hefty premium.
So then the race is on in a way: will SpaceX be able to get their next platform stabilized before the competition catches up to being able to re-use their first stage? If they can there might be some actual competition which should drive down prices even further.
Sounds right to me. Other launchers are probably living on borrowed time at this point. ULA and others should have many more years to capitalize on their advantages, but it won't last forever. They'll either sit there, reap short-term profits, then fade away, or innovate. I'm hopeful it'll be the latter. Tory Bruno, ULA's CEO, occasionally comments on SpaceX discussions and seems to be quite with it.
I have no opinion about what is "acceptable" or not, but my opinion doesn't matter. What matters is the opinion of the customer. There are enough customers out there which find SpaceX's ~10% failure rate to be too high to keep ULA around for now even at a hefty premium.