Its not cheating. Its finding a way to drive the cars one bought the game to be able to drive.
This game's economy is sooooooooooo out of whack that the BEST case scenario that people are hoping for, is a few races with high payouts that they can do over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, in order to accumulate enough credits to buy the cars. That isn't "playing" the game. That's being forced onto a treadmill and being told to enjoy yourself for 987 hours.
Its like Stockholm syndrome. The players have become conditioned to thinking their master (PD) is being good to them by giving them some races to grind with decent payouts.
What a crock. Here's reality. The payouts for everything should be 5X'd, so that even people who play the game a moderate amount (a few hours a week is realistic for most people with otherwise full and busy lives) can accumulate the vast majority of cars in the game within 9-12 months by playing ALL the content in the game, not just a select few races that have good payouts.
A good economy would have players not even thinking about the payouts and just doing races that are fun, challenging and building up their skills.
Give us a game like this and then and only then, would I consider rubber band passive farming to be "cheating".