This is the best write up I have seen on this topic. I started reading expecting to be offended but I don't think this will be anyone's response. Despite the title this is a balanced piece that leaves you thinking not raging.
> Again, the problem is not riches per se, but the fixation on riches.
The desire for riches is not problematic if the majority of people are willing to cooperate to acquire wealth, and seek income from increasing the mastery of humanity over the environment rather by obtaining at the expense of others. Effective cooperation requires distinguishing between income which is positive sum, which adds to the aggregate stock of wealth, and income which is zero sum, which merely transfers existing wealth from others.
Both types of income are mixed together when capitalized into asset prices. Effective cooperation requires individuals to devise methods for distinguishing between the two and communicate these methods with others.
Capitalism vs socialism debates tend to prevent this from happening because they emphasize either productive income or unproductive income without advancing the practical arts and sciences for distinguishing between the two in manner which allows the majority of individuals willing to engage in cooperative production to do so more efficiently.
Isn't this a problem with the nature of individual humans not the structure of human society?
No. It's a problem of excessively-corrupt, under-regulation of individual greed that only a professional, more "angelic," functional, legitimate, ethical, and sensible human social structure (government) can and must limit fairly to prevent a few individuals from hoarding treasure and destroying others. When a few rich individuals effectively own the government in all but name, they own enough power to make it do their bidding and block anyone else from challenging them. They will never relinquish such power willingly because they "need" it to protect themselves and their greed and entitlement makes them believe it's theirs alone. Revolutionary communism probably isn't the answer, but revolutionary sensible something else might be. There is no other way except extremely clever chicanery to remove the influence of billionaires.
Nothing has changed in the principles or human nature; only the culture, fashions, laws, power, technologies, income, and wealth distribution... and especially that nearly all of the controls have failed pertaining to the regulations of gaining and amassing excessive wealth (taxes and such), and purchasing influence (campaign finance reform, etc.). Thankfully, there is not yet an Emperor who decided to not leave after their term, so some controls on power related to government are operating as designed (but for how long?)
Revolutionary communism or similar without full control would simply assassinate one billionaire after another until they understood the message clearly: that their personal survival depends on them returning a large fraction of their looted treasure and all control back to a government independent from corporate influences.
The issue is the drug of absurdly-profund, narcissistic entitlement, beyond greed, married with power it affords and corrupts creates a vicious cycle of vampiric extraction and unlimited desire for even more than is necessary for one or a million people. They then strangle and squeeze millions of people in multitudes of ways and destroy the planet for the self-righteous, vainglory, insular belief in one's omnipotent and omniscient destiny. Meanwhile, their thinking exists in an extremely narrow filter bubble divorced from reality of the existential threats their empires and systems create, risking ecocidal, omnicidal, and suicidal collapse for vaults of accumulated, stolen, and hoarded treasure.