> For some, the money is just a byproduct.
In theory, sure, some are just motivated because they are driven types after a vision of conquering something or other. But this is just a story. In reality, incentives change behavior. Money motivates people. They tell themselves other things, but money motivates people. There's a reason why bonuses and equity are enormous. They attract and amplify financial greed in a vicious cycle.
I used to be a free market/libertarian type, so I understand the whole "let people do whatever the heck they want with their money, as long as it's not violent" but I'm not now. It's surprising that you can just...stop...believing that. Money and its protection, the market place, property...anything that is not a banana in your hand, anything you didn't literally make yourself from rocks and sticks, requires cooperation and dealing with other people, and obeying the rules. Today's instruments of wealth aren't chickens and bread; currency, money, debt; these are social constructions and social agreements. Everything from the government to the police to the courtesy not to rob someone in plain daylight makes currency and money possible; the entire structure of society is a protection scheme for money and property. It's a "safe place" for transactions. It took a ton of work to get here, and a ton of people to keep it going! Without the protection of society, we'd be at chests full of gold surrounded by people with spears. Instead, the system we have now is a social contract--a complex one--that requires a huge amount of cooperation from a lot of not very rich people doing their jobs so rich people don't get eaten alive.
I think it's entirely fair that as participants of that system, we decide what the cap on the number of gold coins you can put in your chest is. Because you can't really defend that level of wealth on your own, you need all of us to do that. So we have a say. (I would put that number, personally, at less than $1 billion. I literally believe that there should be a personal wealth cap of $1 billion. Full stop. It's actually OK to believe that, and I promise you, no one is going to die.)
The rich have so thoroughly blinded and corrupted our thinking about property. They hate scrutiny. They hate people thinking seriously about what the structure of society is. They hate when people notice how insanely unfair it all is. They'll just say Marxism, or Communism, or Socialism. And you're supposed to shut up because you're a monster like Stalin or Mao, apparently. And then the lies. The denial. The koolaid. It's amazing to me that people just accept their roles in holding up the pyramid so willingly. But I guess society would have fallen apart long ago if it didn't select for people willing to hold it up, no matter what the dumbness of the day is.