If you're super super serious, can you even trust Tor? I personally give it better than 50% chance that some consortium of goverments control the majority of tor exit points but won't reveal it for small cases so as not to reveal this trick.

> some consortium of goverments control the majority of tor exit points

Probably yes, but it does not necessarily break your anonymity for https websites.

I find tor is usually just fine for coffee shop browsing. I went to a couple that blocked it someway or other though. Most are no issue.

Yes but tor is slow, making it slightly less practical than the tunnel through the VPS. It also doesn't hide your traffic from the exit nodes, who may be less trustworthy than a VPS provider if you are doing strictly legal things.

(On the other hand, if you want to perform a public service, using tor is a good way of masking the traffic of people who actually want to use it to disseminate sensitive information.)

The premise of Tor is exactly that you need not trust any of the nodes. The only exception being, all of the nodes in your path being controlled by the same entity. But an exit node knowing that an anonymous user has an encrypted connection to a specific site is usually not a privacy concern.

I said:

> non-https websites from coffee shops

If the website you are accessing is unencrypted then the exit node knows the entirety of your communication with it. (It doesn't know your IP; but small consolation. You're still vulnerable e.g. to injection.)