There is a pretty fundamental difference between paying and playing.
I didn't say playing to win, I said grinding to win.
No one is forced to grind for these ships but the option is there so many players take it and I see no difference between putting in 30 hrs of repetitive missions on Elite and putting in hrs at work and using wages to buy the ships.
IF you had to be skilful and a good pilot to unlock these ships then it would be different, but you don't, so you lose nothing by letting people buy them with cash.
FD needs to remove the ability to just grind up to these ranks and this kind of money without learning anything useful other than how to get "stuff".
OK I don't know how you'd achieve that, I don't want to force everyone to be a combat pilot to earn a big ship but there should be some test of ability.
I know World of Tanks is far from perfect but it's another game I know well so I'll use it as an example, a complete noob can pop up, buy a premium tank and drop into high tier battles, they WILL get their kicked (and of their team but thats not my point) and they either eventually give up or maybe start to learn how to play the game and work up through the tech trees to the high tier tanks you can't buy.
In Elite their is no team to annoy, its just you, so you buy the game and decide to sink cash into a big ship, nice, now you get your butt kicked by NPC pirates (or you would if FD didn't nerf them everytime players complain they are difficult to fight) or other players so you either give up, learn how to get good, or hang near a busy station and shoot noobs.
Not perfect but it makes no difference if you paid cash or spent 30 hours running missions in this case, you still have no skill.
I dont want the ability to buy ships with real money in ED, but as it stands its no different to spending time and grinding instead of spending money and buying.
Game needs to get better before it would become a problem.