But they are. Like, my manager and I have a good relationship that is usually highly collaborative, but at the end of the day, I'm judged based on doing the things he wants me to do. Why shouldn't we recognize the power differential? It clearly exists.

So I've had perhaps unusual work experience in that when I've worked for other companies it's been either small startups or Google in its engineer-driven growth phase and the rest of my working life has been on my own startups, but I've found that the best managers think of themselves as facilitators. Their job is to ensure that 1) you're working on projects where your success will lead to the company's success; 2) you're happy; 3) your successes are visible to their management so you get promoted and 4) you don't have any roadblocks in your way. That and to handle the various nitty-gritty administrativa like managing vacation time; family emergencies; conflicts between team members; and performance management.

In companies where management has to explicitly direct the activity of their employees, something has gone seriously wrong. Either the company is not working on something useful to the market and so management is trying to motivate employees to do something pointless anyway; or the company's vision & strategy hasn't been successfully communicated by the CEO so that everybody knows where they fit in; or a manager on a power-trip was promoted into the position; or my values don't align with the company's and I'd be better off elsewhere. In any of those cases the answer is to leave (or if it's my company, fix the problems before hiring more people) and find a company that there's actually a reason to work for. You have one career and there are ~20 million businesses in America to work for (and you can always start your own if no suitable one exists); make it count.

I don't really disagree with this, but I don't think it addresses my point.

When values are in alignment, the power imbalance shouldn't matter much. But when there are disagreements within the team, the manager is the one who defines the rules of conflict resolution, or in extreme cases decides the result.

When values are out of alignment vertically the report is left with 3 options: adapt, escalate further, or leave.

The person you escalate to has more power, otherwise it would be pointless to escalate to them. Ignoring that fact seems silly.

Yes, you might as well use "underling" or "minion".