Many of those people fullfil complex , Critical roles, successfully.
But most of it's "employees" are easily replaceable.
So why won't this work in the general economy ?
As for IDF jobs with less potential, they are usually accomplished by people with fewer ambitions doing much less than their best and placed there because of that (think of military HR, secretaries, nurses, cleaners).
In short, there are no surprises. The Israeli military service is just a minor inconvenience in the path of ambition that is fueled by the capitalist spirit of the general economy, rather than being a replacement for it.
But there are other ways to motivate people.
If we're talking about a different , more utopian world, shouldn't we consider those ?
The alternatives that I can think of:
Enjoying the work and similar motivations: This tends to only apply to certain jobs. In addition, just because I'm intrinsically motivated to work on programming, for example, that doesn't mean that I'm motivated to program the things that society wants me to.
A sense of duty: I think this motivation tends to have limitations and is likely hard to achieve consistently without propaganda, nationalism, or a state religion.
Social status: Call me cynical, but I think this only works if someone can use their social status to get the things they want; in which case it doesn't seem that different from capitalism.
This meant that those who we're good religious students(a life long pursuit, and not financially rewarding) married the most desired women.
And that's just on culture.
So maybe there are ways to cretae a motivating culture .