Author is correct that TOR has better privacy than a better VPN because TOR means you are truly anonymous (assuming the network is not majority compromised).
However, bandwidth and latency on TOR suck, and in many cases the endpoint IPs are blacklisted to hell due to abuse. A VPN is a nice middle ground where your can put another entity between yourself and your traffic, which is valuable against most opportunist adversaries. If a TLA wants me and can get a warrant, not even TOR will save me, but a VPN keeps the ISP from selling my traffic and the media trolls from sending me grumpy letters because the neighbors keep using my wifi to watch free content.
However, bandwidth and latency on TOR suck, and in many cases the endpoint IPs are blacklisted to hell due to abuse. A VPN is a nice middle ground where your can put another entity between yourself and your traffic, which is valuable against most opportunist adversaries. If a TLA wants me and can get a warrant, not even TOR will save me, but a VPN keeps the ISP from selling my traffic and the media trolls from sending me grumpy letters because the neighbors keep using my wifi to watch free content.