I didn't claim banking is a scam, I said that people have different ideas about it. You'll get different answers depending on whom you ask. As for me, I don't know enough about finance to judge one way or another.
I am open to the idea that fractional-reserve banking is a scam, because of my experience of human nature, especially when money is involved.
Certainly the history described in the wikipedia article makes it sound like a clever trick the old goldsmiths came up with, and no one the wiser until time and custom had rendered it respectable.
> the goldsmiths observed that people would not usually redeem all their notes at the same time, and they saw the opportunity to invest their coin reserves in interest-bearing loans and bills.
The trick works fine until it doesn't.
> If creditors (note holders of gold originally deposited) lost faith in the ability of a bank to pay their notes, however, many would try to redeem their notes at the same time. If, in response, a bank could not raise enough funds by calling in loans or selling bills, the bank would either go into insolvency or default on its notes.
This activity is different from mining, or farming, or manufacturing, or shipping, or goldsmithing. It's a kind of consensus hallucination (or a hoodwink) that worked and kept working.
Now we could argue all day whether the bankers né goldsmiths deserve to make money this way, but I'm not interested. If it really bothered me, I would start a bank. ;-)
I'm not financially sophisticated. To me, if there's more cash than gold, something's fishy. :-)
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edit: (Apparently I have nothing better to do this morning.)
Let me see if I can clarify my position:
Long ago my friends got into playing Magic the Gathering. They tried to get me to play and I said I would but I was going to make my own cards. (Make photocopies of the real cards and laminate them and play with those.) To me it seemed totally obvious and reasonable. After all, in D&D no one tries to make you only use the official dungeon modules, eh? But my friends wouldn't hear of it. I got kind of mad at them and told them, "You know there are no real wizards at Wizards of the Coast, right?" But they were baka as the Japanese say. Fools.
For what it's worth, this is my attitude to banking: Neat trick, I can't believe people go for it, but whatever.
As long as anyone can open a bank and get in on the "scam" I can't really condem it. Consenting adults and all that.