Go full circle. Pay them to play Counter Strike all day.
Depends what you value, I suppose. I happen to highly value a world that doesn’t have large, powerful militaries in it.
Are you saying the two South African public works programs I’ve previously linked to aren’t real in some way?
I seriously doubt that’s a question of available labor. More than likely, it’s a question of political will and/or funding.
I’m not at all against some sort of modern day WPA- either in the hypothetical or in real life, but the big question is more about the political will to actually do and fund such a thing, than it is about having the workforce to do it.
I mean, if the Federal government was to offer what amounts to the same pay/rank/benefit structure for a civilian organization dedicated to public works and civil projects, and without the educational requirements or danger of getting shot at, there would be no shortage of applicants. Especially if there’s some sort of WPA GI Bill associated with it.
If we are going to pay then…and supply them with Cheetos, Red Bull, AND gaming systems…then I’d say have them play an MMO where they can at least farm coin. Give the public some value for their money! 
You say this like the two are unrelated - if the labour is funded (i.e. from just 40% of the previous military budget) then the labour is available.
This is a hypothetical where the military can be disbanded, so I take the political will as given.
What those Depression era photos of hundreds of men digging ditches? I mean that’s great if you want to repurpose a Depression era military to utilize their experience digging trenches and earthworks in France.
Modern militaries are highly advanced, technical operations, of which a relatively small fraction involve purely front-line combat roles like infantrymen or tank crews.
And it’s not just repurposing the military either. There is an entire military-industrial complex that would need to be retooled. Multi-billion dollar defense contractors like General Dynamics and Raytheon would need to find civilian applications for things like stealth fighter and smart missile technology.
Which is not to say it couldn’t be done. The world would probably be a whole lot better off if we spent trillions of dollars on renewable energy, health care, electric vehicles and so on. Probably reduce the need to have massive militaries in the first place.
No, the links to the Working for Water (alien clearing) and Working on Fire programs.
And the reason why people have to continue doing the same technical specialty they did in the war-fighting military is…?
Would they need to, though? When they can perfectly well instead develop better fire bombers and smart invasive-plant-spotting drones?
Is this an old thread? Sorry if I avoid all the discussion to focus on the OP.
First step, tell all the oppressed people of the earth that they have to accept their condition and cannot appeal to arms to defend themselves. Explain to the Palestinians and all the others that The World has decided their suffering is less important than world peace and stuff.
Most of women’s wartime jobs, contrary to popular belief, did not displace men; more women worked as secretaries in war industries and the armed forces and government than as Rosie the Riveter. Men did not move into those jobs after the war. By the early 1950s, many women of those women, now married, returned to the work force.
As for demand, there is a huge demand for good housing, better infrastructure, new stuff–it is a demand that cannot be realized because wages are too low and because supply is limited. Government spending, which 1) ended the depression 2) created war-time industries 3) underwrote the “boom” years is still available as a tool. The “laws” of economics do not function like the laws of physics: they represent political choices, which in turn reflect the “balance of power” between the haves and the have nots. That balance of power is not fixed, either.
I’m not counting Cain and Abel violence, but organized violence by hierarchical societies where an elite dominates aimed at another society. There’s lots of it, but our attention is always focused on it and ignores the reality that most people of the time are not actively engaged in warfare, and there are specific, and now easily treatable, causes for such warfare.
It will be interesting to see – not that I’ll be around long enough to personally witness it – if the future potential global population decline results in a kind of “geriatric peace” during the transitional years.
Because they have valuable skills that would be better utilized in the commercial marketplace. Digging ditches doesn’t require the extensive hierarchical military infrastructure. If you repurpose it to do menial labor you’re going to be horribly inefficient. It’s better to create a new, flexible and lightweight agency to handle that task, and to employ people more suited to the work at hand. A well trained military technician isn’t going to stay on digging ditches when she can get better, easier, more interesting work in the private sector.
Why aren’t you counting that? Tribal violence of non-hierarchical societies that weren’t dominated by an elite was pretty systemic in pre-history by all evidence…though, again, ‘elite’ might not mean king but simply tribal leader or headman. If anything, today, things are at an all-time low on the violence scale by everything I’ve seen. And a big reason for that is the large-scale militaries that the various nations have. Taking that away (i.e. removing all military), the reality is going to go back to your Cain and Abel violence on the local level.
We are suspending reality, however, to have this discussion.
No. The reality is that warfare has been with us from the beginning, and most people were involved in this throughout history and pre-history. Hell, our chimpanzee cousins do the warfare thingy…as well as the hierarchy thingy as well. This has less to do with elites and hierarchies as the cause and more that they are a symptom of society trying to deal with ways of protecting themselves from systemic violence.
There aren’t any ‘easily treatable’ causes for warfare that I’m aware of…what is it you were thinking there? Just look at the world as it is today and you can see that the only reason we don’t have widespread warfare is because of the large military systems that the superpowers have that counterbalance each other. If everyone got rid of their military systems today, the actual effect would probably be an initial scramble for non-state actors to push their agendas through force. Look at Paul_was_in_Saudi’s post and you aren’t even seeing the tip of the iceberg. I mean, getting rid of the military doesn’t get rid of the underlying issues and problems…in fact, in a lot of cases, it’s the military systems that suppress the underlying issues.
And, of course, many nation-states simply would never consider getting rid of their military. China is currently in the process of vastly ramping up its military on every level, from strategic/nuclear to conventional across the board…both internally and externally. If they got rid of their military they (the CCP) wouldn’t be able to remain in power. That is a good thing, of course, but I doubt the CCP would see it that way…and China is far from the only country in this boat.
I think if we were to take a step back and look at the OP from a reality perspective, at best what you would have is simply re-naming military forces to be police or civil forces, with the same capabilities but just with different names. Your navy would become a coast guard, the air force would be some sort of air patrolling group, the army would be police and civil forces, etc. Because human nature is what it is…and we were never the idealistic peaceful bucolic folks that you seem to envision us as being in the distant past before elites and hierarchies came into being.
A sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of people is not going to do great things for that commercial marketplace, is it?
And you’re another person using the word “valuable” as though we have an agreed standard of value here.
I’m mainly talking about what to do with the enlisted people. The 18% officer component isn’t really of concern, they’re free to leave for the public sector.
You’re taking it as a given that I would want to be efficient. I don’t. Maximum efficiency is not the point of a public works program like this. And it’s not all menial labour. Certainly if people have applicable skills (can drive a truck, can cook, etc), those will be used.
And once her enlistment time is up, she’s free to do just that. My proposal is only with what to do with the current military enlistees while their enlistment is still valid (82% of the military).