> Alas I am in no position to analyze ZCash math vs RingCT but my feeling is the latter is more understandable and thus might be more secure even if it has much weaker safety promises.

Depends on what type of security you want. If you're talking about security against inflation, then RingCT is definitely safer than Zcash.

But if you're talking about privacy security, then Zcash is more secure than RingCT; the trusted setup can only be used to create fake Zcash, not deanonymize transactions.