Ripple is a company, yes, it's centralized. But XRP trades on a public ledger.

The token is limited. 100 billion XRP existed in the genesis ledger and the code makes it impossible to create more.

While Ripple is based on the same centralized dependencies as the current banking system, the public ledger is not. Holding that against XRP would be as silly as objecting to bitcoin because companies are promoting it to banks.

As for Ripple not empowering people, that's a lie told by bitcoin maximalists who care more about their personal investment in bitcoin than the principles bitcoin was built on. Ripple is getting the banks to fund and build a system for the movement of money that they cannot control.

The protocol is completely decentralized and open.