You're confusing a lot of things, and nobody on Reddit is going after the little guys. You're talking to random strangers most of which are the little guys. We're all individuals with different opinions and knowledge.

Money is more accurately described as an abstraction of obligation.

I worked 10 hours in the field ergo you owe me 2 bushels of rice next week.

I gave you a chicken ergo you owe me 5 hours housework in the future.

Except it's exchangeable for any service, good, or property like real estate/machinery/whatever. It's needed so we can avoid bartering all the time which is slow and more complicated than using money.

The Federal Reserve is a Central Bank. It behaves like a Credit Union for the Banks we actually get to be customers of.

Every bank like BoA, Wells Fargo, and so on has their own bank account at the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve doesn't print anything. It creates money abstractly, most often digitally, by incrementing numbers in those bank accounts that each retail/whatever bank has with them.

The Federal Reserve has one advantage nobody else has, which is it can buy Treasury Bonds from it's "customers" the retail banks by creating money out of thin air. It does it by "incrementing the numbers in those bank accounts" and then it takes ownership of the Treasuries it's member-banks sold to them.

However it is buying Treasuries from the Banks in order to create money. It can also sell those Treasuries later because it owns them after it purchased them.

It also has a disadvantage nobody else has. When the Federal Reserve gets paid for the Treasuries it sells, the money disappears into thin air. This is how the Federal Reserve destroys money.

Fractional Reserve doesn't create more money the same way, like the OP said. What happens is when you deposit 1000 dollars in your bank, they loan say 800 dollars of it out.

They still owe you 1000 dollars. However now someone else has 800 dollars to spend, but they do have to pay it back eventually. That person may spend the 800 on a hotel so now the hotel has 800 dollars to spend, and so on.

This is why "Money" is debt. However it's better characterized as an abstraction of obligation. The person who was loaned 800 dollars has an obligation to the bank that loaned it to them. The bank has an obligation to you, the person that deposited 1000 dollars.

It works as long as the bank doesn't go bankrupt. They do a lot of complex stuff to make sure that doesn't happen. Fractional Reserve is more of a regulation that makes sure the bank doesn't go bankrupt, and can give you your 1000 dollars back when you ask for it even if the person they loaned 800 dollars to hasn't paid THEM back yet.

Not everyone wants their money back all at the same time, so it usually works out. If everyone does want their money back at the same time, the bank goes bankrupt. This is a "run on the bank" which Fractional Reserve tries to force them to avoid like a sort of safety.

That doesn't mean it will always work though.

It's a complex system and it's hard to understand. The complexity and the abstractions all over the place make it seem nefarious until you understand it better.

As far as the "hurt the little guy" stuff, that's even more complicated and it's related to politics, the Federal Reserve, and the law, and so on. It's not just the fault of the Federal Reserve it's our leaders across the board in corporate offices, in government, everywhere to blame.

We haven't built a system that encourages fairness but the Federal Reserve is only a small part of it. It's more of a tool that doesn't care one way or the other. You can use a hammer to build a house or you can use it to bash someone's skull in. The hammer is blameless it's the user that is at fault.

It's better to focus on the political leaders as well as people in the executive and judicial branches because they can actually do something about it, and they haven't. They've been working for the very rich.