As a conceptual move, may I suggest removing the concept of savings accounts from your mind for the moment. Individuals have money that they aren't using this moment. So they loan it to brokers. The brokers find business who need loans, ad charge a higher rate of interest on the business loans than they are paying on the individual loans.
I suggest the brokers are not receiving rent. They are providing a valuable service, without which business loans would be much more difficult (and expensive) to maintain. Yes, the brokers (i.e. banks) make money on the interest rate spread, but they are entitled to earn something, right? Do we agree that making business loans is economically valuable and those who facilitate it are entitled to some reward for their work?
Fractional reserve arises out of the usual feature of the individual loans to the bank - specifically, those loans are due on demand rather than having a specific repayment schedule. In normal circumstances, the broker knows that most people will NOT demand their money back - but some will, so the broker needs to hold on to enough money to satisfy those demands while still making loans to earn the interest to pay the individual loans.
will have an interest rate equal to the inflation
I don't understand how you expect to pay for this (even in nomimal dollars) without printing money somehow. It doesn't seem like an economically coherent position.
A possible system for broking is to pay the broker with something else than interest rates. I don't know, flat rates, maybe? There's also the problem of risks, and what you want to achieve with the investment (do you want the money returned at all? If you construct, say, a school, you may not want to, because the increase in public wealth may match the money you created for it). We need a way to sort out "bad" brokers from "good" ones, whatever that means.
Okay, that's difficult to do without interest rates. Maybe if I think about it for...
So I have been checking laws around the world regarding Apostasy. And I have found extremely troubling data on the approach Muslims take to dealing with apostates. In most cases, publicly stating that you do not, in fact, love Big Brother (specifically, that you do not believe in God, the Prophet, or Islam), after having professed the Profession of Faith being adult and sane (otherwise, you were never a Muslim in the first place), will get you killed.
Yes, killed. It's one of the only three things traditional Islamic tribunals hand out death penalties for, the others being murder and adultery.
However, interestingly enough, you are often given three days of detainment to "think it over" and "accept the faith".
Some other countries, though, are more forgiving: you are allowed to be a public apostate. But you are still not allowed to proselytize: that remains a crime (in Morocco it's 15 years of prison, and a flogging). Though proselytism is also a crime if you are not a Muslim. I leave to your imagination how precarious the situation of religious minorities is, in this context.
How little sense all of this makes, from a theological perspective. Forcing someone to "accept the faith" at knife point? Forbidding you from arguing against the Lord's (reputedly) absolutely self-evident and miraculously beautiful Word?
No. These are the patterns of sedition and treason laws. The crime of the Apostate is not one against the Lord (He can take care of Himself, and He certainly can take care of the Apostate) but against the State (existence of a human lord contingent on political regime).
And the lesswronger asks himself: "How is that my concern? Please, get to the point." The point is that the promotion of rationalism faces a terrible obstacle there. We're not talking "God Hates You" placards, or getting fired from your job. We're talking fire range and electric chair.
"Sure," you say, "but rationalism is not about atheism." And you'd be right. It isn't. It's just a very likely conclusion for the rationalist mind to reach, and, also, our cult leader (:P) is a raging, bitter, passionate atheist. That is enough. If word spreads and authorities find out, just peddling HPMOR might get people jailed. And that's not accounting for the hypothetical (cough) case of a young adult reading the Sequences and getting all hotheaded about it and doing something stupid. Like trying to promote our brand of rationality in such hostile terrain.
So, let's take this hypothetical (harrumph) youth. They see irrationality around them, obvious and immense, they see the waste and the pain it causes. They'd like to do something about it. How would you advise them to go about it? Would you advise them to, in fact, do nothing at all?
More importantly, concerning Less Wrong itself, should we try to distance ourselves from atheism and anti-religiousness as such? Is this baggage too inconvenient, or is it too much a part of what we stand for?