Ripple was designed to meet present needs and to move in the direction its designers believed would be beneficial.
This is not limited to this thread (or countless other essentially identical threads). Beyond this forum, I've talked to a lot of other people both online and offline who really have no understanding of what ripple does or how it benefits them at all.
I would say most people don't understand how banking works in general. What they know is they don't like ATM fees or foreign transaction fees, etc. I see Ripple having more potential as an institutional tool rather than a consumer facing product. Consumers just want to make payments easier. If Ripple can be adopted by big banks to make transactions easier for consumers then it'll succeed if not then it won't.