Others have replied adequately. And I still believe you want easy ways to get gear instead of experiencing new content.
I agree that upgrading gear is pretty dumb and a poor use for VP. I argued that some pages ago when we had the discussion about how many things you need to do to a piece of gear to make it wearable (gem, enchant, reforge, upgrade). Honestly I wish they didn't do the upgrade mechanic.
At the same time I don't think they should always put out VP gear with every patch to equal the current highest raid tier. I'd find it more acceptable if the ilvl wasn't as high since it ultimately takes away some of the thrill of getting new gear in LFR when half of the drops will be pointless. In fact, through VP you're able to get halfway geared to ToT heroic content with essentially no effort since getting VP, as you mentioned, is easy. And getting that geared for raid content with so little effort, I believe, is quite ridiculous. To get geared up for LFR so you can enter the raid and experience the first difficulty is completely acceptable.
You're saying that instead of one form of grinding, doing the Timeless Isle for better gear, you'd simply prefer a secondary form of grinding. That's what this boils down to.
There's better options for how to spend VP gear they could implement and I'm hoping to see more of that in the future. Let us buy the raid crafting materials to have other players make gear perhaps. Or just use VP to allow extra rolls instead of the coin system they currently are using.
Edit: I'll add that I think you have a valid point about how VP is spent. I just don't believe you're arguing it well.