Given that you accused me of ignoring reality because I questioned…

I said you seemed to be ignoring "the established context," i.e. the context I was asking about.

The idea that a slave master even can act in the best interests of their slaves by denying them the right to act in their own self interests is precisely what I am challenging here.

And in return, I proposed that if their "right to act in their own self interest" is for whatever reason not an option, their enslavement by a kind man is preferable to their enslavement by a cruel one. I don't know why you're so much against such a simple evaluation.

I'm telling you that you can't act in the best interests of sentient beings by denying them the right to act in their own interests

This is why I called your evaluation naive. You think slavery happens in a vacuum, one person arbitrarily deciding to enslave another for no reason other than personal gain (muh dualism) and that if they hadn't done so the other person would have walked free. You thus refuse to entertain other variables, other circumstances.

a classic rule of debate is that those making claims are under the burden to support those claims, while those denying them are under no burden to support that denial in the absence of said support

If every large or complex firm we've ever seen has involved some form of hierarchy, I'm justified to infer that hierarchhy is a necessary component of large or complex firms until I either see one that lacks it or can come up with some explanation for how it would be possible.

Which brings us to this:

It has also been demonstrated that large-scale and high complexity production can take place in the absence of "leadership". Don't you dare ask me for an example

Please provide an example.

You've also shifted to talking about "centralized control,"

Unless you are proposing a new self-refuting definition of "leadership" in which "everyone is a leader", then centralized management is a necessary aspect of leadership.

I was more referring to the "centralized" part. I'd describe the economies we have now as suffering from centralized control, and it's thus easy to speak of anarchistic economies as being "decentralized," but this shouldn't be understood to mean there would be absolutely no centralization at all (the mere concept of "social ownership" would be incoherent otherwise).

I'm going to ignore the Bakunin quote as more of the same

The purpose of that was to show that anarchists have known what I'm telling you for a long time now, which would seem contrary to your claim that my perspective somehow implies anarchism is a "false ideology" (whatever that means).

but this does not mean the need for the work itself must therefore disappear.

You obviously don't mean this, as you have gone to pains to point out that the example of the ice cream shop did not actually necessitate leadership, despite your original implication that it did

I didn't imply that. You misunderstood, and I immediately clarified.

and your continued insistence in the absence of all evidence that it "probably" did.

Probable? No, I said it was certainly not one of social equity, because no human relationship truly is. What I acknowledged to be unknown was which one of them dominated the other (and I don't consider the answer to be of much importance; you brought it up).

authority whose commands (or "suggestions," let's call them)

I like your attempt to slip in this conflation of two obviously distinct concepts

The distinction was unimportant in this context. I included "suggestions" only because I foresaw you disliking that I used the term "commands," likely for your thinking it necessitates those being commanded not having a say in the matter (which it might, depending on whether we want it to).