beware of ideologues. MC vs. MM, digital vs analog, direct drive vs. belt drive - all depends on the implementation, not the format per se.
Regarding cartridges you will always pay more for MC, no matter what.
This is very important for a newbie!
It is obvious that MC has very short life span and stylus is not user replaceable. Even if your MC cartridge has reasonable retail price this is not the end, you will need an expensive MC phono stage, Headamp or SUT to use with this type of cartridges. You can simple double the budget for this reason. It can be a mess even with cables, because Low Output signal from MC cartridge is much more sensitive to the cable shielding etc.
And more important:
If a newbie can't handle tonearm (which is a common problem for people who never use turntables before) you can destroy your MC cartridge in the first week. Even experienced users can make a mistakes.
With MM/MI cartridge you can just buy additional stylus for reasonable price to install it by yourself in 10 seconds and your broken cartridge is back to work just like new.
With MC cartridge you will have to ship it back to the factory via your distributor, you will pay again nearly 60% of the retail price to get new cartridge from them (only if manufacturer offering such support program), or you will ship it to someone like SoundSmith for re-tip or refurbishing. It will cost you a lot and you will have to wait about 3-5 month (depends on retipper).
This is why MC is not for a newbie. And actually it's not better than decent MM or MI.
This is not a philosophy or bla bla bla. This is real problem.
It's about usability and service.

