Agreed. They're not forcing anybody to do anything in the sense you mean.
However, I have no sympathy for the banks because in other ways they do force us.
Fractional reserve banking creates money out of thin air, inflating the money supply and causing price inflation. This destroys the value of our savings. Even 2% yearly price inflation across ten years adds up to more than 20% value just GONE on the savings set aside in the first year.
And, the banks play the Federal Reserve system game whereby we are all forced to use Federal Reserve Notes.
In years past, before there was a central bank, banks would issue their own notes/paper money. This was part of the fractional reserve banking game. They issued more notes than they had gold to cover it. When all the banks hold notes and checks from each and thus owe each other, you have an interlocking system of debt which works fine for the banks as long as none gets too carried away with issuing notes and loans. But, when a few in a region get carried away and issue too much and the debts are called in by other banks, then things start to collapse. The whole reason for a central bank is so that the individual banks can inflate evenly and no banks owe more than they can pay to other banks. Our Federal Reserve is no different. It sets the reserve requirements for all the banks in the system. It is institutionalized price inflation. It is institutionalized theft of our savings. It is institutionalized theft of our pay as prices increase faster than our paychecks.
Oh, we're forced alright.
I agree that government should stay out of private business. Government chartered the Federal Reserve. Thanks a lot, President Wilson. Also, in the early 1800's, say between 1820 and 1840, a number of US banks got into trouble by inflating too much. They shut their doors and refused to give out gold on demand. The government validated this action. Which is to say, the government confirmed the breach of contract. Lets say I'm holding a bank note that says pay to bearer ten dollars gold. Its a form of contract. Government sided with the banks allowing them to breach that contract, rather than making the banks pay until they went out of business, or putting them under court supervision and paying out whatever percentage on the dollar until they went totally broke and out of business, including the personal wealth of all the directors and shareholders.
There was another government trick around this time. Courts arbitrarily decreed that money you deposited in a bank was not your money anymore. So, when you loaned money to a bank by making a deposit, it was not really a loan and wasn't really your money anymore. Even though it was a so-called demand deposit. You see, if the government recognized it really was a demand deposit, you could demand it, and the government would have to protect your interests in its court decisions whenever a bank was about to go under. Rather than the government protecting the banks by letting them close for a few days or weeks, or more importantly letting them stay in business, which meant the same men could inflate and cause price inflation and risk more people's savings again.
You can learn more about this in the minority report of the gold commission from the 1980's,
The Case for Gold. It is a thin book. Easy but very fascinating to read. Guess who was on the commission, dissented from the commission's so-called findings and co-authored the minority report? Ron Paul.
You can read it here:
http://www.cato.org/case-for-gold/ I highly recommend taking the time. Highly.