Because I want to live in an interplanetary society with awesome tech and flying cars and holodecks and life extending medicines and who-knows-what-else and we're not going to get there if people are content to sit around in their nondescript 1-person apartments eating pre-packaged meals and the occasional weekly piece of cake and play Call of Duty or watch YouTube all day.
I agree, and I think there are more nuanced and meaningful historical and especially modern reasons we encourage veterans to turn swords to ploughshares.
It’s reasonable to assume that the powers that be may find themselves in situations politically precarious if veterans aren’t able to provide for themselves and those they ostensibly fought for. Veterans know where real and metaphorical bodies are buried, they also know that at a nation scale, the internal problems that face first world nations are usually not logistical, but political. If not for fear of disrupting business interests, UBI in the form of food stamps, housing, and Medicare for all is possible. The veterans know this, because they are fed and housed and medically treated at scale during and after service. However, if everyone receives these same benefits also without service obligations, the ability to offer incentives to service is limited.
UBI is a thorny issue due to the complexities of implementing it piecemeal alongside the already-existing status quo. In some ways, a greenfield solution would be easier, but they call those revolutionary changes revolutions rather than evolutions for good reasons.
I’ve worked with organizations that employ people whose physical or mental condition makes it difficult to obtain/maintain a typical job. In all likelihood the type of work performed (stuffing event participant packets) was a net negative in a small view of value. The folks there seemed pretty happy to do what they did in a supportive setting with other folks who had similar life circumstances. That leads me to believe that there were larger value-concepts at play than what a cash amount can enumerate.
The value that any person can create is principally limited by imagination, not the free market. The wonderful thing about a moderately regulated free market is that the imagination of more people can be used to engage the value creation inherent in every person.
Yes, it IS a provocation. Let's go deeper into this question.