That's only true for the very top tier raiders. Yes they can clear the toughest raid with i250 crafted gear, which is moot considering you get the strongest gear as a reward for completing content you used weaker gear to complete, I agree. This would be remedied by adding a third harder difficulty that requires max ilevel gear and rewards you with other things, but that's a different discussion altogether.

For the rest of us mortals, we need to get the higher ilevel equipment to take on the higher tier raids.

I consider myself a casual raider. I raid 2 nights a week, and my group has got as far as a11s. We need to be able to improve our gear in order to increase our chances of beating the next fight; that's the system as intended. Raid progression for casual players. You clear a floor, get better gear, and then tackle the next fight. Also I still need to grind tomestones to buy the shire gear to upgrade in the first place, you can't rely on getting lucky drops from savage and that gear takes 4-8 weeks worth of tokens anyway to buy, which is both methods #1 and #2.

The reason why you have scrip caps and weekly Alex tokens is to make sure people don't gear up and clear the content too quickly. People who don't attempt creator savage don't need i270 gear as the current content (Sophia, expert roulette) doesn't require it for players to clear. Ater all, ffxiv is a product, and a business that relies on people coming back to play in order for it to make money.

Come 3.5 everyone will be able to upgrade their shire gear with hunts and the weekly drop from the next 24-man raid, and higher ilevel weapons presumably will be available from the next primal fight.