"Because I Said So" – the long history of polite coercion
That fine, silken cloak draped over the naked emperor of power, carefully stitched with phrases like “you ought to”, “you must”, or the always-a-red-flag “we are required to”. One might almost think these words were woven by bureaucrats with a thesaurus in one hand and a sledgehammer in the other. At its core, legitimate power is the quiet agreement that some people get to tell others what to do—not because they’re better, brighter, or morally upright, but because we’ve all tacitly accepted a hierarchy that says, “Yes, you get the chair at the head of the table… and I’ll just sit over here by the bin, cheers.” ...