WAR, WORKING OUT: What is it good for?

In 1967, a satirical book was published that was later deemed a "hoax" by some. It raised many critical and challenging issues pertaining to the nature of industrial society and war, including questions about the 'purpose' and 'benefits' of environmental and social waste--our chronic waste of natural resources, and the waste of human life itself. Here's one excerpt:

The production of weapons of mass destruction has always been associated with economic "waste." The term is pejorative, since it implies a failure of function. But no human activity can properly be considered wasteful if it achieves its contextual objective. The phrase "wasteful but necessary," applied not only to war expenditures, but to most of the "unproductive" commercial activities of our society, is a contradiction in terms.

"... The attacks that have since the time of Samuel’s criticism of King Saul been leveled against military expenditures as waste may well have concealed or misunderstood the point that some kinds of waste may have a larger social utility." [13]

In the case of military "waste," there is indeed a larger social utility. It derives from the fact that the "wastefulness" of war production is exercised entirely outside the framework of the economy of supply and demand. As such, it provides the only critically large segment of the total economy that is subject to complete and arbitrary central control. If modern industrial societies can be defined as those which have developed the capacity to produce more than is required for their economic survival (regardless of the equities of distribution of goods within them), military spending can be said to furnish the only balance wheel with sufficient inertia to stabilize the advance of their economies. The fact that war is "wasteful" is what enables it to serve this function. And the faster the economy advances, the heavier this balance wheel must be.

But we needn't stir up a war if we have disposable income and/or energy we wish to expend. Consider the juxtaposition of the people/activities below (a laboring peasant featured on the cover of a Led Zeppelin album, and a pastime familiar to us in the West):

Is there something tragically wrong with accumulating excesses of natural resources, energy, food, calories--time itself--and then just burning off those consumptive excesses whether it be the flaring of landfill gas [pic] [commentary] or simply 'working' out (playing) to burn away 'extra' calories in our 'free' time? José Ortega y Gasset wrote:

Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilized world.

What are your thoughts?