What is authority?

I should have been a philosopher, although I don’t know if that can be considered a profession. How does a philosopher earn their crust? Do they get paid to pontificate?

At any rate, I’ve been thinking about authority as a function of communication. We communicate in order to negotiate authority so we don’t have to resort to force. So far in my research I’ve encountered ten ways we negotiate authority.

In case you’re interested, here’s the full list. I won’t pontificate any further.

1. Power: Brute force or disruptive events that ignore authority and leave a vacuum for authority to be reestablished.
2. Authority: A recognized claim of ownership, stewardship, or control that we expect others to honor.
3. Autonomy: Authority applied to the self with two modes: active autonomy which is self-discipline, and passive autonomy which is freedom from demands.
4. Mutuality: Reciprocal investments like friendship or love that can increase authority, but will also increase surface area and vulnerability to imposed authority.
5. Obligation: A voluntary felt sense of duty or subordination that is expected but not enforceable.
6. Persuasion: The verbal mechanism we use to redistribute power, authority, autonomy, etc. by convincing someone to do something they’re disinclined to do.
7. Attribution: Establishing conceptual provenance for an idea or other unrestricted resource.
8. Framing: Structuring a viewpoint by labeling something and changing how people view it.
9. Observation: Authority practiced through a subtle process of selecting what gets described.
10. Exclusion: Setting boundaries of participation by challenging or denying a person’s standing.