Rather, democracy is when every free citizen has authority and oligarchy is when the rich have it. Democracy is when there is a majority of free, poor men who have authority to rule, while oligarchy is when it is in the hands of the wealthy and well-born, who are a minority.

In our time, there is still a mixture of oligarchy and democracy, or a simulated and mediated democracy. That is to say, in some countries, the oligarchy reigns with the façade of democracy. For example, how can we talk about democracy if the elites dominate, and not the majorities? How can we talk about democracy if there is no separation of economic power and political power? How can we talk about democracy if, in recent times, there has been the most offensive concentration of wealth in a few hands in the history of the world? The fortune of a minority has increased without limits, without any moral concern, while there are a billion human beings who live on less than a dollar a day.

[T]he concentration of power in the hands of the few is common to all cultures... When a small group of people rules a society the political system is considered an oligarchy; when only money and wealth determine how a society is controlled, the political system is a plutocracy. From the standpoint of a democratic society, both oligarchy and plutocracy are inherently unjust and corrupt. ...In many ways, the majority of Americans live in a democracy of minimums, while the privileged few enjoy a plutocracy of maximums. ...[T]he dominating influence of the One Percent...

[O]ligarchy, strictly speaking, is a regime "in which a rich minority rules for the advantage of the rich minority and in which the people composing that political society are ranked...because the ruling principle of that regime is the principle of natural inequality." Aristotle called it a deviant form of aristocracy (in the same way that tyranny is a deviant form of monarchy), and in practical terms, it exhibits its form through excessive concentrations of property in the hands of a few, the reservation of education to the elite, and the organization of government to serve the purposes of the oligarchs.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

Whether democracy or aristocracy is the better form of government constitutes a very difficult question. But, clearly, democracy inconveniences one person while aristocracy oppresses another. That is a truth which establishes itself and precludes any discussion: you are rich and I am poor.

He who is a citizen in a democracy will often not be a citizen in an oligarchy.

It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election. — Aristotle, Politics, Book IV

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. — Aristotle

Oligarchies have generally sprung from the ruins either of monarchy or of democracy. When supreme power falls into the hands of a weak sovereign, the great nobles encroach upon the prerogatives of the monarch. In democracies particular families or individuals acquire, by their talents, their wealth, or their virtues, an influence which loses its original character of responsibility, and becomes permanent and self-dependent.

Then an unjust democracy must be worse than an unjust oligarchy, mustn’t it?

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting

Democracy is premised, in some measure, on majority rule, and democracy is difficult in a situation of concentrated inequalities in which a large, impoverished majority confronts a small, wealthy oligarchy.

As Aristotle said, once you have oligarchic rule, there are only two choices. It is revolution or tyranny, and that's it. I'm not naive enough to tell you the revolution is going to win, but I'm going to tell you that if it doesn't win then there will be a very ugly corporate tyranny in the United States.