[devnulloverflow]

> > "Oligarch" originally meant the post-soviet kleptocrats who were handed control over formerly state companies at discount prices.

> Aristotle already pioneered the use of the term as meaning "rule by the rich for the rich" aka plutocracy [0].

"Original" is a dangerous term which roywiggins shouldn't have used in this case. But roy is right about how the term got used in the Eastern European context. And while things happen in the west too, people complain as much or more billionaires who made it big as outsiders who (initially) had no such connections to political power.

[roywiggins]

Yup, I don't know about dangerous, but "original" was definitely innaccurate on my part!

It's a word that came to be attached to post-Soviet kleptocrats, so that's why it ends up being used in that context and not in Western contexts, since it's taken on the meaning of wealth extracted from the state by pure cronyism.