No, reinventing the wheel is alright; at best you may find a new and better kind of wheel, at worst you'll still learn something. This is forgetting that wheels can be round.
Only for those who don't understand the euphemism :). That guy actually learned from past mistakes and avoided reinventing them (methods that never worked).
What the original saying is about is pretty clear from the words "condemned" or "doomed" to repeat it (depending on the version). [0]
The saying is not about "reinventing the wheel" as in "refining/reinventing something already positive". It's trying to steer people away from major mistakes. Like ones that lead to great human tragedies and loss. Of course, everything can scale, it can affect an individual or the whole world.
