[NoGravitas]

While I disagree with you in many particulars, I'm grateful for the depth of this comment.

Regarding VPNs, one issue that I'm sure you're aware of but didn't discuss, is that VPNs aren't really a technical privacy solution. Rather, they're a technical solution for moving your privacy concerns from one policy jurisdiction to another that you see as more favorable. That can be private policy (your VPN provider has a better privacy policy than your ISP), or public policy (the Netherlands have better privacy policy than the US). But the policy issues still matter. If every government had a dystopian privacy policy, and enforced it on all of their ISPs and VPN providers, then a VPN would be useless.

[dredmorbius]

VPNs aren't really a technical privacy solution. Rather, they're a technical solution for moving your privacy concerns from one policy jurisdiction to another that you see as more favorable.

Now that is a very insightful and illuminating observation.