This is my take on PRO membership and the coin shop.
1. In PRO, as with other Pokemon games, the economy is only half the game. The other half is PvP. It doesn't matter what your bank looks like if you suck Weedle at battling.
2. Pay-to-win mechanics help students and employed people to compete in game wealth with those who have more time on their hands to play. A completely free-to-play game will discourage the former from investing a heavy amount of time and effort into it, only for them to fight a losing battle against the hardcore grinders. Also, with the recent modification of membership into an item, it's more possible for penniless players to afford membership and coins through hard-earned pokedollars. As a player who'd rather not spend real money atm on this game, I'm actually enjoying this win-win situation.
3. Victory Road is poop compared to Dragon's Den when it comes to pokedollar profit and experience gains. A non-member player spending 4-5 hours in Dragon's Den, according to calculations a friend of mine made, will make approximately 100-125k pokedollars. This is not even including the potential pokedollar profit from the experience gained through battle, since lv90-100 Pokemon can be sold for quite a bit compared to their UT counterparts.
4. Doing away with membership benefits is not smart for an up-and-coming game like PRO. Pay-to-win is a necessary evil to support Shane and his project. If players are unloading gratuitous amounts of bills into the game, it just adds to the potential success of PRO. Remember that this game is in beta development and that we're all beta testers.