No the end result is not the same at all, As it stands right now, if you want to play the game, you have to play on the main universe. the moment you give people the choice to play elsewhere there is a good chance they might, especially if the server owner is allowed to tamper with the rules far enought to create a server that is far more attractive then the main universe. Therefore I think that the result will not be the same at all and the population of the main universe will drop even more.
This is something that the devs themselfs have to think about. How important is it to the devs to keep a healthy number of people in the main universe to try to maintain the MMO aspect of the game? or are they willing to throw that out, at least to degrees, to allow a decentralized network? (like minecraft and ARK).
There are other reasons why someone might be motivated to rent a world other then having the power to kick people off of it for silly or salty reasons. Being able to name the world. being able to pick the block colors, biomes and the many many other aspects of the world.
As for the current settlement drama, I am still kind of new to the game so there are aspects of that, that i am most likely not aware about, but never the less ill take a shot at it anyhow. The simple solution to that is to allow settlements/beacons a button to disallow merging with another, saying you need to have your own world for that is overkill. furthermore on that note as it stands right now, that is the risk you take if you pick to build very close to someone else, If you wanted your own world to build on, then why would you build close enough to someone else and run the risk of auto merging in the 1st place? why not build in a more remote location?
As for people being [Insert Colorful Words Here] when it comes to plot placement, This I feel is more of an Admin/GM problem and the way plots work may need to be reworked a little bit. I thought I read somewhere you can report people for placing plots in such a way, that they are obviously trying to create a problem. The devs may need to hire more people to be able to go thur the reports and make a judgement and remove the plots that are deemed unhealthy,
I also think that maybe plots might to be reworked a little bit, as it stands right now when you place a plot it also protects everything higher and below it from being taken by someone else, This protection might also need to be changed to cover a small radius around the area and/or be able to detect when there are gaps/holes in a ploted area and protect that as well, with the option to disable this function or have a whitelist of who is allowed to build right up against their area if the player wants.
As for people complaining about the reduced availability of resources, this haves nothing to do with having
absolute control over a world. If people are wanting to rent a world so they can have a world to themselves that no one else is allowed to mine on, then maybe they should not be playing a online game that contains other people. limited resources is not allways a bad thing, as this game also seems to be trying to promote some Econ features. It is a good thing for some resources to be hard to get and run the risk of being taken by other people, it adds value to the resources.