Fractional reserve banking... an idea so far-out that most people have no clue about it. Or how much it influences their lives.

It works well for some things (i.e. an environment capable of sustaining exponential growth), but the rest of the time? Not so much. Ultimately, the question to ask is, "does the monetary system work for US, or do WE work for the monetary system?" Not hard to see that it's currently the latter.