From skimming TFA, it's not that the numbers are fake per se, it's that they're wildly misinterpreted.
Job cuts coincided with minimum wage laws, however, they also coincided with seasonal reduction in workforce. So it's entirely expected that that would happen.
Adjusting for seasonal expectations
which you absolutely must do for a proper comparison
gives you the opposite conclusion, and emphatically does not point to the minimum wage having a negative causal link to fast-food employment numbers.
Is there any regime where this is more efficient than spokes? I'd imagine that at high speed there's an aerodynamic advantage (possibly similar to a track/TT disk wheel?), but I can't imagine the bearings being better than current bikes. But bearing loss might (???) just scale linear with speed, so probably a win from aero in the end. But this isn't counting weight, which I imagine is worse (but doesn't matter much at high speed on flat ground).