> Suppose a dissident wants to publish information adverse to the government, there's a situation.

In what case would a commercial VPN provider, which will have a payment path associated to you, be better than something like Tor for the sort of user who fears government retribution?

Commercial VPN services are pretty much exclusively for doing things that annoy copyright holders. They're great for that, but for almost any other use case where one might want a VPN they're not the best choice.