Grinding machines from today are light years ahead of those from 20 years ago. Precision is so much bigger, that it's hardly to say we are talking about same thing at all, when comparing today's grinding machines with those from 20 years ago. 20 years ago, when you grinded skis, you basically ended up with brand new ski, which meant plenty of wax cycles first and only then you put ski back on snow. Today, you grind ski before every race (talking about xc skiing, where these things really matter), put race wax on and go ski 50k race... something what noone could ever imagine doing it 20 years ago. So no "hairs" and stuff from 20 years ago are there today, and another thing is, today you grind so little of ptex off, that first skis can really handle 100+ grindings (before it was more like 6 or 7), and second, as it grinds of so little ptex, ptex is still fully saturated with wax when grinding is done.
As for article... it's complete insanity. Not the article itself, but idea of having uniform wax for everyone. You don't achieve anything with this, except for certain company gets more profit, as they got monopoly over selling waxes, but you certainly don't achieve leveling of playing field. Especially with xc, and that's what article is about, ski construction, ptex variant and structure is just as important as wax. Honestly, nowadays at least on WC level, these things are pretty much only thing that makes difference between fast and not so fast skis, as with current wax teams size, it's almost impossible not to get right wax. Eliminating wax, doesn't make a thing, as someone with properly tested 100 pairs of skis will still have insane advantage over someone with 3 pairs. With "wax whatever you want" you still have chance to level this a bit up, as you might be better then opponent when picking right wax combination, with waxing differently etc. (at least on lower level races). But if you take this away, it's only a matter of money and ski stock, which is basically exactly what they wanted to get rid of it.