For how long? Not that I think it's healthy or anyone should do this, but for most of the past two decades, American military services regularly deployed units

For how long? Not that I think it's healthy or anyone should do this, but for most of the past two decades, American military services regularly deployed units of thousands at a time for 15 months overseas, during which they worked up to 20 hour days with 2 hours of sleep, 7 days a week for the entire 15 months. And they did this with zero chance or expectation that they might get rich, also knowing there was quite a good chance they'd end up permanently disabled. For better or worse, devotion to a cause is a proven motivator of human action. As for alternatives in the business world, we'd need some economic system that wasn't analogous to warfare in which one firm outcompetes all others to take most of the winnings. If you want a lesson from the US losing in Afghanistan, and arguably losing in Iraq, in spite of being able to drive its labor force to such extreme exertion, consider that a massive advantage of the insurgency was their ability to mobilize a part-time gig-based workforce that mostly worked from home. But which lesson does business learn from that? Allow work from home? Or getting part-time contractors with no benefits to kill themselves and sacrifice children for you?