This would be a better article if it didn't read like an advertisement for ZeroTier. It could easily be replaced with a generic recommendation to use a VPN at all times (which I already do), and the end-result would be the same.
I think what he's arguing is that fully encrypted p2p overlay networks would be the next step beyond privacy VPNs, and would be more powerful. Basically if we "encrypt all the things" then ISPs will only see opaque encrypted traffic and will be unable to effectively implement really fine-grained traffic prioritization/de-prioritization.
What he suggests would be possible. People and services could join public ZeroTier networks and you'd have this flat "meta-Internet" where everything was encrypted and all traffic looked the same.
I don't think this is a silver bullet. ISPs can still make deals with big players like Netflix, Google, Facebook, etc. and offer them at a higher speed on the "clearnet." Other traffic would be relegated to the "other" category that would be slow-laned on non-premium plans. This applies to more conventional privacy VPNs and anything else just as much as it applies to ZeroTier.
It's always going to be worse than going direct.
First and last initials are AI.
Is there any doubt that no-tolerance of encrypted traffic will be baked into their ToS with proprietary encryption becoming the standard between the bundled endpoints?
Wouldn't the ISP's default in that case be to de-prioritize all opaque encrypted traffic?
If you use just a regular VPN then the traffic at the other side of the VPN will still be slow.