What does it mean for a language to be better off? Why does it matter?  
Is a language a living thing? Would you want people to be badly off, for
the sake of a programming language being better off?

What part of the paragraph heading ``Totally Inapprpropriate Data Structures''
has the author not made clear enough for you?

You can write stupid code in any language; if stupid code can also
be beautiful in Lisp, so what? That's only an advantage, because it
means that if you aren't constrained by performance, you can just
express yourself in the most convenient way to get the results.

Consider that if you wrote matrix multiplication using linked lists
in C++ or Java, it would be so contorted, that the reader of the
code would not even recognize it to be matrix multiplication.
Moreover, removing the stupidity from the program would probably
be quite hard, involving irrelevant changes all over the place.

The number one concern in programming is correctness and reliability.
The number two is maintainability. Performance isn't even number three.

If you don't mind paying for and using a proprietary operating system, why
object to proprietary tools?  Or are you stupid enough to believe that
just because your computer came with Windows preinstalled, it was free?
Or maybe you feel that for some reason Microsoft deserves your business, but a
Lisp vendor does not?

I simply don't follow the chain of reasoning.

You want someone to buy and license Windows, so that they could use it to
develop tools for it, and give those tools away to you, right?  These people
have to bootstrap themselves with proprietary tools at some point. You think
that Cygwin magically ran on Windows from day one without the help of any
proprietary tool?

Even the Linux kernel needed proprietary tools at the beginning.
Very early versions were compiled with a Borland C compiler,
because that is what Minix used. Oh yeah, and Minix isn't free
software either. Only when the kernel was robust enough to host
GCC was the switch made to that compiler.

Some people do make free software for Windows, like Cygwin, but you have no
right to demand others to serve you.

There are no impediments against writing free, open source software in Common
Lisp.  If your users want to run that software on some proprietary platforms,
and they want to make it run it as efficiently as possible, they can license
the proprietary Lisp systems needed to do that.  If they are not smart enough
to port the software to these Lisp systems, they should be willing to pay you
to do it for them, and provide you with the tools that you claim you cannot
afford.

Note that a number of proprietary Lisp vendors allow you to use their
tools free of charge. Some have reduced functionality, some do not.
But what is available is good enough to actually port a program to
target these systems.

For example, one vendor's system has the limitation that you cannot make a
standalone executable. But that doesn't prevent you from getting the program to
work.

Thus if you are really short on cash, you can delay the purchase until you have
conquered some of your other risks, like getting the program working, and
finding potential customers.

You know, there was a day when CLISP and CMUCL didn't exist;
they exist because motivated people took *action* instead of sitting
around lamenting how there are no liberated Lisp implementations.