The ridiculously powerful creatures and creature-strategies that came later (like Tarmogoyf and, to get really egregious, fucking affinity) seem to be overcorrections to the long-standing weakness of creatures. You could do a lot with your green growth decks (mana-generating elves and huge creatures on early turns) to beginning and intermediate players, but advanced players with reactive decks would shut those down handily.
On the broken cards that come out now and then, Type 2 is a necessary evil. It's not that the designers are bad. It's that Magic's metagame simply won't work if design flaws (which are inevitable with a game of such complexity, just because it's impossible to predict the exploits that thousands of players will discover) don't get scrubbed away a couple years after inception.
I also agree that the no-reprint policy around the Power 9 was politically motivated and wrong-headed. The way it should have been done is as follows:
1. Art will be changed with every reprinting. This way, you aren't screwing
collectors by reprinting coveted cards. They have a guarantee that
the card, in that form, will never reprint.
2. Overpowered cards will be reprinted but "pointed", i.e. each Mox
might be 4 points
and Black Lotus might be 5 and Time Walk might be 7. Every tournament
sets a point limit (or no limit) that applies to all decks submitted.
That way, the constraint is still a deck-construction constraint rather
than which 13-year-old has a rich daddy.
There's no acknowledgement of the politics of the "reserved" list, the Power 9 (and why even to this day, they have never been reprinted). Or efforts such as "Modern Masters" where Wizards reprints rare cards from years ago that are still in use. (OMFG Tarmogoyf).
I already know a bit about the game (not a pro like some people...) but the article feels quite "empty" to me. So many issues were just not even addressed, and the article seems like a gross simplification of what is going on.