Book Notes: "Jean-Jacques Rousseau" by Leo Damrosch

Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Leo Damrosch

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


It is difficult to review this book without wanting to critique Rousseau rather than the biographer. I was so annoyed by Rousseau's life, as opposed to my reaction to his obvious genius in Reveries of a Solitary Walker, that I must admit to thinking that the book was rather bad. However, time seemed to speed up towards the end of Rousseau's story, and the biographer redeemed himself despite not having done anything poorly in the first place. In the latter parts of the book, the comparison with Benjamin Franklin is exceptional and puts into chronological perspective the Old and New Worlds. I must now read the Confessions and compare it to Franklin's Autobiography to make sense out of this account of Rousseau's life. I must admit to expecting more of the man, but he did not create the posthumous legend and cannot be blamed anymore than the biographer can be blamed for Rousseau's habits that had me annoyed to such an extent that it took me close to two years to finish the book.



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A Centralised Institution for Selecting and Appraising Infrastructure Investment?

© Depositphotos.com/@Paha_L

One of the key findings from my comparison of communications technology policies in Canada and Australia was that there are so many varieties of particularism - that is, the various user requirements and preferences, technologies, types of infrastructure, geographical and cultural circumstances, and so on that require bespoke solutions - that a centrally-controlled, one size fits all solution will inevitably provide a suboptimal strategy in meeting infrastructure demand.

Yet when planning infrastructure, there may well be a case for a centralised body to independently vet project selection and the relevant cost-benefit analyses before government-led investment in infrastructure occurs.

An IMF staff study, released as "Chapter 3: Is it time for an infrastructure push? The macroeconomic effects of public investment" in the latest instalment of the 2014 World Economic Outlook, suggests that centralised institutions designed to appraise major infrastructure projects may improve the efficiency of public investment in infrastructure:

"project appraisal can be strengthened by instituting a centralized, independent review process to ensure robust estimates of the costs, benefits, and risks of potential projects, as has been done in Australia, Chile, Korea, and Norway" (IMF 2014: 31).

As I wrote in The Conversation earlier this year, the NBN was the last of the great romantic infrastructure projects. Indeed, the federal government's cost-benefit analysis signalled the end of an era in major infrastructure project selection and deployment.

It would appear that different types of infrastructure might benefit from different deployment strategies. However, it makes a good deal of sense for government-led investment in infrastructure to be appraised and selected by an independent body.

One of the major problems with transport infrastructure, for example, is that political incentives, specifically votes, may encourage a myopic planning approach that suits the election cycle. Surely long-term infrastructure planning should be beyond the control of short-term caretakers.

Of course, a centralised institution brings with it a whole raft of other problems for the practice of liberal democracy. But in the meantime, Australia is suffering from infrastructure bottlenecks that might be solved with some clever planning and investment. 

Whether Infrastructure Australia can gain the necessary political clout to fix Australia's infrastructure woes is another story. The biggest problem for any centralised institution in a federation is the constitutional legacies of responsibilities granted to the different levels of government. 

Indeed, it seems that, despite the federal government's apparent best practice in infrastructure policy, the states may just (pardon the pun) de-rail Infrastructure Australia's good work unless Mr Hockey's asset recycling policy begins to develop some traction.

Nonetheless, it is entirely regrettable that Rob Sitch's "Nation Building Authority" (see ABC's Utopia) provides a timely counter-point to such best practice.

Book Notes: "Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms & a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories" by Simon Winchester

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms & a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


A heavy commercial formula with tenuously enervating connections to the Atlantic on every page, it took a very long time to get into, picked up a bit in the final quarter, then dragged on laboriously until I was happy to be finished, but only so I could scratch it off my list of part-read books. I very much enjoyed The Meaning of Everything, but I think the scholarly topic piqued my interest. I really struggled with Atlantic as it made me re-think how I select the books I read. Winchester obviously spent a great deal of effort on researching this book, and I was happy to learn more about St Helena and other parts of the world that were entirely unfamiliar, yet I am now beset by a desire to be more discerning in the books I read, and to stop and give up on a book when I know it was designed as an airport read, and would have served that purpose admirably had it stayed in the airport. I, however, brought the book home and its contents were ill-suited to this less-than-sympathetic environment.



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