[lagadu]

Negative on that: all a VPN provider knows about me à priori is my IP (and all that comes with that, like ISP and rough location) and which monero payment ID I used to pay it with (which is entirely useless). In contrast an ISP knows everything: my address, name, bank account, contracted service, fiscal number, etc.

If either of them is going to use my traffic data against me, I'd rather it be the former, who I can easily replace within minutes and has less information about me.

[rphlx]

It does not totally invalidate the benefits you mentioned but from what I've heard there are mature commercial services that map consumer IPs to meatspace IDs (name, phone number, address, household income, credit score, etc). The ad industry is both a consumer and a producer of these databases for obvious reasons. Highly likely that multiple levels of law enforcement have access to them as well.