Joelkatz,
Thanks for participating here, all the best to opencoin and ripple.
Please realise that few here believe this is a conspiracy, but any reassurances you provide, such as pitch and strategy, wouldn't be unwelcome.
The point of the thread is to figure why Average Jane with no interest in business, politics, economics, programming or anonymity, when investigating this new Ripple craze all the friendly ads are talking about, go even further out of her way to look into this novelty bitcoin money she may or may not have heard is created by drug criminals that are some how tied to lots of people in cyprus losing all their money.
ripple/OpenCoin will succeed. Because ripple.com is very cool and functional and a solution to a problem. They will weed out the understanding problems. The aspect of centralized meaning govermental control over the not-going-away-cryptocurrencies, that goes along with it, will not be understood by the (ignorant, stupid, opportunistic, degenerated and submissive) mainstream. Same as ever, including the talking by people like me

...
And while your at it please answer this ignorant question. If the government of any
country wanted you to freeze peoples accounts until they provided proof of idedntity, can they legally force you to?
Of course they can and they will. Maybe not legally in the sense of the US-constitution, but - in my opinion - the patriot act allows that for sure.
Do you really think, OpenCoin will resist to a request from the US-goverment? This
would mean to start a revolution and this is not, what investors want. They will never do this. They want to drive around in shiny cars and looking from the point of financial power onto the struggling people in the streets, while enjoying their self-talk about "changing the world into the future."
Conclusion: You can use and you probably will have to use ripple, but you
can never ever trust them in way beyond running a functional software system in their own interest.
* They are also preparing a marketing camapaign with cool T-Shirts and stuff like that.