No, it is a statement of what balance IS.
Gygaxian balance is process-oriented, not end-state oriented. Outside of the process of the game, balance doesn't exist. There is no end-state balance. This is why "Game balance is really broader than the options allowed for on the poll."
All games are balanced through process based means. It's just a statement really that all players by default exist within a set of fair rules.
This doesn't imply that all the processes are the same (they're definitely not) nor does it imply that one process is better then another (that's personal preference.)
No matter what your process though, it doesn't change the definition of balance. (Fairness throughout the rules basically)
To think it does is absurd: It's like saying that because a helicopter and an airplane use a different process to achieve flight, that somehow the definition of flight is different- it's not; flight is flight.
Gygax's idea of how a game should be balanced is different then the current designers ideas, sure- and one can argue whether either designer achieves his goals or not sure, but in either case the point remains the same, the games were designed with balance in mind.
If one reads Gygax's advice to players in the 1e PHB, or in KotB, or the similar advice found in modules like B1, it becomes clear that the players in any given milieu share a large burden in maintaining "game balance" both on the basis of the choices made in play, and in preparing for play (including both character generation/selection and equipment selection).
This is true in just about any game.
The DM is deliberately presenting an environment that attempts to trick the players into unbalanced play. Superior players will not take the bait, or, better yet, will manage to discover ways to "defeat" the "unbalanced" encounters.
Again you can do this in any game. I regularly present challenges that are out of "balance" to my players in my games. All you're doing is taking a balanced game and presenting the option to unbalance it.
This is, in Gygaxian terms, what "superior play" is.
Cool, his play style prefers presenting unbalanced choices. Right on.
In Gygaxian terms, balance is what good play falls into....treading the narrow line between "too easy" and "too hard" on the basis not of the DM setting up the world to make this line all there is, but on the basis of the players being skilled and canny enough to recognize the line and walk it with care.
This doesn't have anything to do with the design of the game, only the play style. The game itself was designed to be balanced, but the players can (and in his opinion should) let it become unbalanced or balanced based on their choices, and play style. (This matches my opinion as well.)
Balance is a tool, same as it always was.
The argument can be made that the current designers are promoting a way of using balance that is different then Gygax preferred sure- but that's a different thread.