Trifles from Anderson brings us a good political history lesson in the wake of Karl Rove’s resignation. Rove’s ambitions apparently were to create a GOP machine that equalled or surpassed Mark Hannah’s at the turn of the 20th century. Trifles points out that Hannah wasn’t necessarily the primary reason for GOP success during the early part of the 20th century but, even so, Rove is no Hannah.

For my part, I don’t think Rove’s resignation means much one way or another. His power and success never had much to do with his official job. He’s still very good at sleazy but successful political campaigns, and all those require are candidates who listen to him. I suspect GOP candidates will continue to listen to Rove’s suggestions. The fundamental problem is that successful campaigns have nothing at all to do with competent governing.

My recent trip to Telluride got me thinking a little bit about private property rights and the public good. Yeah, I’m a geek. Anyway, Telluride is this beautiful little mountain town in the midst of a box canyon. My understanding is that it came on hard times back in the 70s and early 80s as the mines closed down. But, a funny thing happened. Skiing took off as did other outdoor pursuits. The hippies came and made it cool. The coolness attracted money, big money. Now, it seems that every other person in the town is involved in real estate one way or another. The town is striving mightily to avoid killing the goose that’s laying those golden eggs. This involves some significant limitations on the rights of private property owners.

At some point about 20 years ago (I think), the town did a survey of all of the structures in town. Aside from some real derelict properties, pretty much everything that was there has to stay. You can rehab it, but externally, things have to remain much the same. There is also some freedom, apparently, to squeeze appropriate improvements onto lots that already have the historic structures. Additional development beyond the traditional town is somewhat restricted as well. To some extent, the geography itself places these limits. But, there are a lot of regulations as well.

So, I’m wondering how you figure out what limitations are appropriate. Telluride would be an easy place to kill off if an idiot with a lot of money and only short-term vision decided to run amok. So, maybe a place like Telluride needs heavier restrictions than the normal place. But, even in a place like Lafayette, you want to keep a lid on some of the worse potential abuses — don’t want someone jamming a landfill next to the city park, for example.

I know there are private property purists who look no further than to say “It’s mine, I should be able to do with it as I please.” But, this ignores the fact that anybody’s property exists in a context where its use has an impact on neighboring property. On the other hand, Soviet-style totalitarian regulation isn’t the answer either — clearly the USSR wasn’t some kind of Telluride writ large. So, I wonder, in a perfect world, what principles should guide appropriate regulation to ensure the long term success and improvement of a community.

This one is cross posted from the family blog, but I like it — it’s the kids in Telluride:

We’re back in Denver now.

The beautiful women in my life.

The Masson Men:

Worn out Harper:

Light posting for awhile since I’m taking a vacation in Colorado. Enjoy yourselves!

Michael Specter, writing for the New Yorker, has an article entitledDamn Spam. It’s a nice history of spam and the ongoing war between spammers and anti-spammers.

I first logged on to the Internet in the wake of the brouhaha over Canter & Siegel’s Green Card spam in 1994, so it was a bit of a trip down memory lane to read about them again.

Via Slashdot: Indiana University Dumps Google for ChaCha.

“Come Monday, no more Indiana University searches will be powered by computer-driven Google. Only by people-powered ChaCha. The move was announced by new IU President Michael McRobbie, who until recently sat on ChaCha’s Board of Directors (5-29 SEC filing, PDF). IU will draft hundreds of librarians and IT employees to be ChaCha Guides for the university’s websites, although a FAQ accompanying IU’s press release tells librarians not to expect any checks for their efforts from ChaCha, which IU notes is backed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Compaq founder Rod Canion.”

I took a quick spin around the Chacha search site, and the first thing I noticed was that there are a lot of advertisements in the search results. Big turn off.

Paul O’Malley was kind enough to send me this link entitled Midwest Economy: Automotive wages in flux. I wanted to get a link up before I lost it in the shuffle. Basically, manufacturing wages have been stagnant since 1980. Automotive wages fare slightly better, but the Midwest’s share of automotive employment is falling.

My only editorial comment at the moment is that worker productivity has increased since 1980. Why hasn’t their earning power gone up in a corresponding fashion? The fruits of that extra production is going somewhere, I presume.