There are a few reasons why not average persons would need one and a few reasons average persons would need them.
Corporate greed: IP (and geo-fencing) based ads are all the rage. We used to do ‘corporate market research’ based on cookies, but that is no longer a thing since a few countries, namely the EU and the United States state of CA (opt out consent for CA) require consent for cookies. That means that websites now need a new association for their data collection. They can’t realistically pull MAC addresses (yet). In the US IP addresses are mostly considered public domain like your physical address. Yet a lot of businesses, LLCs, and people prefer to get PO boxes so that their mail and side hustles are not linked to their home. VPNs would do the same thing virutally for youtubers, instagramers, and online streamers.
If you are being censored in a country, getting a VPN might work for a while, but my guess is that the VPNs you are able to get in country still provide logging and provide that data back up to the government in some way shape or form. A VPN for the average joe isn’t going to do much but buy time. Now, if they know what they are doing and are running their own VPNs or using the dark web in an attempt to obfuscate their actions they might have a better chance, but also increased risk.
HTTP, HTTPS, and other traffic all rely on the protocol being utilized, such as TLS 1.3. But when you say isn’t a VPN better than HTTPS? Well that depends on what you want your VPN to do. Are you looking to establish a presence in another country to browse the web? Buy off their steam store? Access your data back home or make it look like you are still working from home when traveling to Hawaii? Access a rival corporation’s SMTP server? There’s a lot of different ways to establish a VPN with different protocols. Sometimes, corporations will stack VPNs or use different ones for different objectives.
In reality, for the average citizen in the US. You’re already hiding in the masses and no one really cares about you as an individual that much. Sorry, you’re just not that interesting. If you’re behind say a “Great Firewall” that prevents you from reaching data outside of your home country, sorry you’re probably out of luck because my guess is that they’re controlling all the VPNs, ISPs, and other enablers.
To your last point about an ISP getting to approve or disapprove your downloads and cutting off your internet, that’s… hey man, not sure what country you’re from but WTF? Usually this is because people are torrenting (read: Pirating) copyrighted material that hollywood doesn’t want shared so they send their lawyer with their letters to sue the ISP and the ISP tells you to stop. In that case, e.g. theft of IP, yeah a VPN would work but you’d want more than just a VPN.