I think Satoshi didn't make a new system to combat costly transactions. Satoshi created a system to combat centralization. In which case, Satoshi was successful. Along this argument, Ripple isn't really contributing anything at all. The problem is centralization, the presence of powerful third parties. Ripple came in offering centralization as well. Therefore, the technology isn't an improvement at all.
Satoshi didn't create bitcoin to fight costly transactions no doubt but the price of bitcoin have gotten so high to the extent that we cannot use it to make smaller transactions which means that only the whales or the big investors will likely be using bitcoin as a means of transaction but for most of us, we have found bitcoin as an investment rather than the major purpose of its founder which is to stand as decentralized method of performing transactions.
Let's look at the case of Laszlo that used 10,000 BTC to buy two Domino's pizzas when the price was literally $41, now one bitcoin alone is worth more than a thousand pizza which means we can only buy pizzas now in sats and not in bitcoins as Laszlo did.
Anyway, why do we care about what a shitcoin CEO thinks about Bitcoin?
We might not really care about what Ripple CEO thinks about bitcoin but when we look at it at a closer glance, we might still need some altcoins to perform lesser transactions especially those altcoins that are stablecoins or has less volatility.
