What I had in mind by Ego was "flattery", so in a positive sense. In retrospect, ego without M is an empty, impotent argument.
We can rename the account for you if you email a better username to hn@ycombinator.com, but I've banned this account in the meantime.
Hype a position up like someone has creative autonomy to lead, because it strokes their ego, then later just shrug.
Now imagine if we make universal health care and universal college education free of cost and available everywhere to everyone regardless of income. I bet military recruiters' job will become a lot harder.
This makes me wonder: why can't we use ego in civil service? I'm thinking police, firefighters, and transit workers (from the bottom all the way to top management). Because after all, if we want to reduce cost (and I hope we all do) then what's better than to reduce pay?