barriers to entry

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Modern_Money_Mechanics/Introduction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fractional-reserve_banking

http://books.google.com/books?id=krc-Tf9JfY0C&pg=PA134&dq=economics+fractional+reserve+banking&sig=sg6LSwy7a43Lufkzm_j11wWfiaw#v=onepage&q=economics%20fractional%20reserve%20banking&f=false

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-new-economy/how-banks-make-money

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/chapter-7-money-creation

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Banks-Create-Money-Out-Of-Thin-Air&id=921796

http://ingrimayne.com/econ/Banking/Commodity.html

Those are more or less the first half-dozen websites I found through Google searching on the question of whether the way banks lend money in the U.S. — that is, more than they actually have in the vault, up to a limit — somehow creates more money. They all say "yes", save for a couple isolated comments from random visitors.

Then I went to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply on the advice of a knowledgeable friend and found something those sites didn't mention: there is more than one definition of "money". After that, I found the best explanation so far at http://www.khanacademy.org/?video=banking-1#Banking%20and%20Money , but I doubt I'd have kept looking if I didn't have an expert steer me in the right direction after I incorrectly concluded I'd found the correct answer.

I don't know if the authors of all the sites I found on my own were wrong, lying, mislead, or oversimplifying on purpose. I knew that economics, like all sciences, has its own vocabulary. Words like "demand" and "shortage" don't mean what they do in everyday English. I hadn't realized "money" was in the same category.

Is this a curse or a blessing? How many tens of thousands of dedicated, responsible citizens are doing their civic duty by voting and whatnot with no idea that they're doomed to random flailing since they can't trust what grade school-level words mean? Isn't that bad?

Or is it good that there's such a clever filter ingrained in the system to weed out the ignorant and the poseurs so the people who actually understand what's going on can interact with one another without intrusion? Barriers to entry can be good things. Maybe it's better for the country as a whole that there's the distraction of feels-good-but-ultimately-ineffective activism to occupy the don't-quite-get-it-yet crowd so they don't obstruct the people who understand the system.