The choices are that stark and separate!
Alan B,

Weimar Republic

All water ecosystems of this planet require rehabilitation, especially through the development of sanitation and also proper sewage treatment of nutrient-loaded water flowing through them.

A new ocean and freshwater ecosystem repair industry would help stimulate economies worldwide.

No?

Individual: Yup, their paper became worthless!

Had they as a part of Canada, done. Ploughed those resources into a very large income-earning peoples' project that became more of a money earner over time! They could've emulated that very outcome, Where the project/projects paid for all government services/amenity and the people instead of paying any tax at all, received an annual tax refund!

Recorded as described in the annals of history! To be eventually privatised on the empty promises of a cohort of robber barons!

There's one born every day and our dairy industry was full of them as they allowed the dairy co-ops to be dismantled on the greed is good, urgings of tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber! Ditto sugar and wool?

Look at how well the politically based dismantling of those co-ops worked out for rural and regional Australia and just how well they served us through the Great Depression and how Keynesian economics eventually create an economy the third wealthiest in the world and a creditor one at that! Along with a period of unprecedented post-war prosperity!

Look, if we build a very fast VLT that cruises at 900 klms, we'd massively stimulate the economy and our technological energy dependant industries.

And if that train and those industries could be powered with the world's cheapest, cleanest, greenest energy, i.e., MSR thorium.

We'd become an energy-exporting superpower!

Even more so if it, i.e., MSR thorium, was rolled out as myriad cooperative enterprise!

On the grounds that, co-ops were the only free market, private enterprise, business model, that survived the Great Depression largely intact!

And if you believe as many do? We couldn't have another even worse one!? You re dreaming!

Business as usual paradigm is a recipe for a downward spiralling, economic contraction, that may make the great depression look like a Sunday school picnic!

Keynesian economics coupled to the aforementioned cooperative, nuclear energy, enterprises, capable of turning us into a superpower energy exporter!?

Very stark choices indeed, especially for those who want to retain coal and the business, as usual, exploitive capitalism! I kid you not!
Alan B.

If we do go back to business as usual? And there's a second wave?

Why should we bother cooperating with a recalcitrant government, just looking out for themselves and powerful vested interest?

I mean, there have been sacrifices on the front line and a return to the greed is good, business as usual of the past? A mockery of an and all frontline sacrifice!

If there is a return to business as usual and the robber barons back in control of our destiny as a nation?

I'd say, FT! Just ignore all the evocations of the robber barons' puppets!

I certainly would not don a uniform to enforce their will or spill blood for them in any social unrest, civil conflict or war!

If we're not to be truly free and masters of our own destiny?

Then, WTF is the point? I mean, we can be anybody's slaves or robotic compliant citizens?

The trains will still run, the phones will still work and the hospitals will care for the sick and injured? Schools will still teach and it'll probably be based on mandarin?

And the economy will be pragmatic and in the best long term interests of the planet!

Why do I say these things? Because I d see a return to business as usual, sans less freedom than now and with a huge cohort of collapsed businesses once the nanny tit of government support is ended!

Followed b a crime wave of unprecedented proportions! As hoped for Christian sharing based change is dashed by the, control freak, hard right!
Alan B.

build a very fast VLT that cruises at 900 klms,
Alan B,
I'd gladly swap such a train for a nuke station. Do we really & I mean really NEED such fast, hyper-demanding maintenance dependent train ?
One good parallel high speed Mono rail would be my favourite. No bridges, most services could be run underneath, no trees would need to be cut, it'd be unaffected by flooding & trees or cattle on the tracks, no railway crossings, car parks could be under the rail etc etc. in all it'd be the most practical solution in my opinion !
Plus it would be a perfect project to involve a National Service scheme going on for a decade or more for a start.
All I can envisage is Win, Win, Win !.

VLT means solid-state electronics and no moving parts and no friction. This means SFA maintenance! And means something we can still use for a century r more with a little updating.

The only thing faster is something similar that operates inside a sealed loop and in an airlock serviced vacuum.

And given a rail gun is the motive force, sub-light speeds are possible, if entirely impractical. (All aboard, Sydney to Melbourne, ETA, 5 minutes) ( Stretched limousines? Nah, we got stretched people.)

A monorail would be practical and good for the daily commute, given it could occupy the central division in commuter highways? Meaning, there'd be no need to acquire land or a corridor! We could build a dozen or more, to service all capital cities

Or better yet, dozens of new dormitory suburbs, replete with their own CBD and industrial estates?
Alan B.