You should stop and take a look at the cash shop in other MMOs.
FFXIV cash shop is there but it's not predatory at all, and you can absolutely vote with your wallet. If you stop and look at the other cash shops, they're actually in the game as well, as you log on you even get advertisements depending on the MMO. GW2, WoW, ESO, BDO all have the cash shop right there when you log in. And the prices are same or worse. WoW has similar price mounts. GW2 has fairly ok prices but you can buy the first round of legendary weapons by trading in gems for in game currency. BDO is pay2convenience to the point that it's p2w for gearing up and doing pvp. ESO, one of FFXIV's direct competitors, keeps advertising their new season of lootboxes and skyshards (they give skill points) in their store. A giant login banner as you login, exclamation points all over the menu in the UI for the store and gambling boxes, and when you log out there's a pop-up like a freemium game. In FFXIV you have to go outside the game, open up a web browser of your own volition, and go find the tab called optional items. Lol. There's no RNG with what you buy, and the more expensive mounts are $24, which are account wide. I've heard of people spending thousands on crates in ESO to get special radiant apex bullshit mounts. And they even have extra gem currency which you only get for gambling, and getting dupes. Oh and they have macrotransactions on the store where you buy limited time digital houses ($150-200 each, not buyable with in game money for a lot of mansions) and have to buy music boxes. And you still have to buy DLCs such as 2 dungeons only or expansion which is one new zone, 1 new class and 1 trial only. That's it. If you sub you get some ESO bucks but you still have to buy expansions and you lose DLCs if you unsub. And they market eso+ subscriber only discounts so they can get more money out of subs with limited time sales as if they're going to run out of pixels. They even did shady stuff like change stats for racials and then put the race change tokens on sale after the twitch dev stream. The community complained is the only reason they gave away race change tokens for free later.