" Since almost all (about 90%) of the wealth of this country belongs to 60 families, and most of those families have female rulers or partners — the men dying off of heart attacks seven years earlier than the women (on average) and leaving the stocks, bonds and other goodies to their wives — THE PATRIARCHY does not seem like a very accurate term to me, especially since it implies that all men, including the lowest-paid workers and the homeless wretches begging on the streets, share equally in the economic clout. No: the correct, traditional term used in political science for societies in which a small minority of rich families makes all the decisions, Oligarchy, fits our situation much better. In fact, it fits all post-tribal societies I know anything about, including the allegedly “communist” nations. Patriarchy, a theoretical form of society in which all fathers have equal power — “one bloody man, one bloody vote" — has never existed anywhere. "

― Robert Anton Wilson , Cosmic Trigger 3: My Life After Death