money as a concept is a tangible equivalent of time put into labor. time = money. the tangible portion of it could be anything, from shells, gold, to paper currency...
you make $5 an hour at work, you need you grass cut, you cut it yourself, since you can't afford to pay someone to cut it for you... your time = $5 an hour...
you make $100 an hour, you need your grass cut, you hire someone to cut it for you because 1 hour spent cutting grass could be spent with your family, tv, or just sitting and watching another guy cut it for you for $5 ah hour... so... money = time...

some people accumulate a lot of other people's time - these are millionaires and the like... regardless, if the wealth is in shells, or gold or dollars... some people manage to dig the wealth from the ground, gold, oil, iron, etc... that digging diminishes the value of the money, as the money created not by time put into the labor but by creating the symbols (currency) of the time of labor, while not backed up by labor...
I cite Karl Marx, his work "Capital"... i am grossly paraphrasing, it was good 20-25 years as i glanced inside that book...

you are citing the same things that i mentioned, greed, lust (women have caused a few conflicts), food, resources... i am not following your thought line where the powers of this world are treated a bit different then the rest of us ... maybe they can buy a few more days of their life, but - they still take a dump same way as i do, and if they are struck by a lightning, they are toasted, like anyone else would... i don't think they take super pills that prevent cancer (i think Steve Jobs could afford a super pill and would stay alive)... so... i agree with most of your points but not all...