Metro man, several European legacy carriers with excellent safety records have a long and successful history of hiring cadets with no other flying experience. The military in most countries does the same. Part of the reasoning is, they want to control all aspects of training, from scratch; it's easier to train someone to the standards you require, than to re-train people who learned bad habits (or figure out what bad habits they may have learned, when you didn't train them). The cadet "zero to hero" bashing is a red herring, and turboprop/glider/banner towing/bush flying/ppl instructor/aerobatics skills are not required to become a safe (airline/fast jet/whatever) pilot.
Sorry for the thread drift, back on topic, pay to fly is an entirely different problem, whether for cadets or captains, and it becomes a safety problem when it is "pay to skew the selection process". Hard to prove but it is probably happening.