Your first sentence is the definition of "oligopoly", not "oligarchy". Oligarchy is when you have a large share of political power not marker power (though they can go together).

The NYT appears to be going after Eastern European politicians here, which is surely deliberate as they tend to be conservative and against immigration, so the ideological enemies of the New York set. But it seems they got distracted along the way by the shocking discovery that the EU is opaque and corrupt. The most interesting thing about this story isn't that some Hungarian academic thinks he got fired for criticising the government (i.e. his employer) but rather, that the New York Times' Brussels correspondent has never previously investigated the EU itself.

It's basically modified form of communist centralized control of the economy and closer to feudalism than it is American style crony capitalism and regulatory capture.

Although I can see how someone could mistake the two, the former is far more obvious form of corruption, while the latter is wrapped in language like 'saving local x industries against foreign competition' or well intentioned liberal equalization that always somehow ends up benefiting the politically well connected over the wider society, trading one problem for worse ones.

USA is a worse oligarchy than USSR ever was.

https://mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/US-Territory...