Unfortunately there would be a couple problems with this idea.
1st: If money couldnt be obtained from wild pokemon and the only way we could obtain it would be battling other npc's/players, the economy would be very bad off. Considering the npc's have a week till reset and newer players just starting off needing money but cant obtain it due to low lvl pokemon and such would put the economy in a rage. Would probably cause players to become uninterested in the game and such as well in my opinion.
2nd: If staff were to implement your 2nd idea of implementing the actual pokes icon to surf outside of battle then there would be no reason for surf mounts thus, a lot of coding to do to get all the possible pokemon who can be taught surf to show outside of battle.
Staff are online everyday and try to take care of bots as much as they can (Example: Kagawa)