This is not true at all. If Bill Gates walks into a bar, the wealth distribution changes dramatically, but the absolute standard of living of the existing people doesn't change at all. In fact, you could even argue that the absolute standard of living increases, since almost nobody is super-wealthy in a vacuum; they enjoy their wealth because they provide value to others via goods & services. That's the whole point behind the argument that "wealth is not zero-sum".

> access to opportunity and capital, hope, must be universally available

Again, it's not clear at all how one's theoretical net worth negatively impacts someone else's access to opportunity / capital. When my rent goes up, it's not because I'm in a bidding war with Jeff Bezos. An MRI doesn't become unaffordable because Jeff Bezos exists.

> Money isn't really either. Cash is simply a tool that a capitalist society uses to encourage the exchange of goods and across markets where it wouldn't otherwise be obvious how to make an exchange.

Money is arguably zero-sum, because there's a finite amount of it. When someone else hoards billions in cash, it means that there is a significant portion of the total money supply that is out of circulation. That's what's bad for society. When wealth turns into money, we already tax it..

> It seems that the point is really about how to mitigate the tendency for institutions that have extracted much wealth from society

Wealth isn't "extracted from society", because it isn't zero-sum. It's not like there's some finite amount of wealth, and the super-rich have taken it from everyone else.

> So I guess my question is if as you suggest access to capital is more available than it's ever been, why isn't it being deployed?

I'm not sure the premise is correct. There is more capital deployed today, per capita, than at any time in human history, even after adjusting for inflation.