Interesting, I don't think that decentralization and authority go hand in hand. Authority can be centralized or distributed, but it is still authority.
I guess it comes down to what one considers authority.

Ecosystem solution is neat. Steem almost got there with communities and SMTs. I believe people hijacked that before it happened because some ecosystems (ie. bid bot communities) need other systems to leech off of since there content isn't valuable. Actually, there is a lot of content that aren't valuable and will end up in low functioning ecosystems.