I'll answer the question posed in the first part of the article. Yes, there are many pepper mills that function perfectly for more than a few weeks. I have several that have worked perfectly for years. I have a Cole & Mason pepper mill that according to Amazon I bought almost exactly four years ago. I use it at least several times a week and have on occasion used it to produce large amounts of ground pepper. I've found if you pop off the top, you can take a Tim Taylor "More Power" approach, attaching a cordless drill to the grinding mechanism and quickly crank out mass quantities of freshly ground pepper. I'll admit, this mill is not cheap and I thought long and hard about the purchase, but four years later I'm very glad I bought it. It's a good quality tool that's worth the price.
The article lost me entirely when I saw the misuse of "begs the question". It's bad enough when regular folks use it improperly, but when I see alleged professional writers using it in place of "raises the question", if really irks me. (Sorry, pet peave.)
This strikes me as one of those "I have to file 500 words and have nothing really interesting to say" articles that pop up all too often.