By now, I think it is pretty clear that Ripple - with its UNLs - will ultimately become a core of Ripple service providers, while everyone else will use ripple clients that depend on one of these providers. You can go ahead and run your own Ripple server, but your server will be useless unless you put those core service providers into your UNL list, so basically, the network will be completely dependent on a core set of providers. Those providers will have to be trusted not to collude, and basically trusted with the entire operations of the Ripple network.

I've brought this up a number of times in a number of ways, and Ripple supporters all agree, but they say "Bitcoin (or any mined coin) is no better because everyone relies on pools. The pools have all the power, so you have to trust them just the same."

So basically, Ripple consensus is just as good as Bitcoin mining, because the decentralized ideal of Bitcoin is gone.