That's because you still have to pay wealth taxes in currency, not just by giving up your "wealth". You can't pay taxes in 1/4 of a house or painting.
Although I'm pretty sure an 80% wealth tax would just collapse the economy because people wouldn't own their homes or businesses anymore. Maybe you could take 80% of their debt too?
The elite could simply dictate how societies would operate.
Inflation helps them as their assets are inflation-proof and it helps wipe out their debd.
The system benefits those who get choose how it operates.
If by "natural" we mean somehow rooted in or consequent to human nature, then economies are very much natural. Human beings are social animals, and within this social context, we exchange goods and services for mutual benefit and for the sake of the common good. Economies become unnatural to the degree that they are detrimental and depart from human nature, in which case they cease to be economies to the degree that they fail. The details of economic practices are subject to a great deal of prudential judgement, and regulation is but a prudential determination of general principles of human nature to specific circumstances.
Economies don't live in some abstract realm, of course. They are the sum of human exchanges which themselves are a product of individual choices themselves influenced by culture and law. When the law is used by those in power to exploit everyone else for their own (myopically understood) benefit, we call that a tyranny.
But to be able to judge any of this requires a clear grasp of what is just. Recall that justice consists in rendering onto others what is their due.
Although, to be precise: Inflation hurts everybody maintaining their savings in some form of cash. Rich people with a large pile of cash also have a lot to lose.
In the medium term current retail prices will be offset by wage increases as long as inflation does not become a galloping inflation.
Individual "wealth" is so boring and flat and uninspired. Just Scrooge McDucks everywhere. Doesn't it feel like an archaic concept at this point? Such a narrow instantiation of humanity, can't die soon enough.