I think that's an overly simplified view of 2000 years of history. We've never had a utopia, but its safe to say we have more democracy now than in the feudal ages. There have been periods of greater concentration of unchecked power and lesser in history, some periods where government was stronger and wasn't captured as much by private interests.
The USA is currently a “democracy” and the government of the USA is the single largest human organization in history, and has powers that monarchs could only ever have dreamed of. Surely, you are correct that governments have had varying levels of power, but they were at all times comprised of or bought by oligarchs.
