A free market will help New Orleans rejuvenate best

According to this Financial Times report, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's commission on rebuilding the city claims to support "free market forces". Yet if you actually look at what they say, their definition of "free market" is highly corrupted. (Looks like the spirit of Louisiana hasn't died.) Here are a few gems:

The mayor’s commission is expected to recommend that neighbourhoods be given a year to rebuild a sustainable community before any are abandoned. If, at the end of that time a critical mass of residents and services had not returned to an area, the city would then declare it unviable and order people out.

Sounds more like Soviet Russia moving various ethnic groups around than laissez-faire.

Other plans expected to be unveiled by the commission include a light-rail system, an overhaul of the city’s troubled school system, and the creation of a new jazz district to revive the city’s cultural heritage.

There's so much land available, if a light-rail system would be economically effective, it'll show up, and dammit, New Orleans already has a jazz district.

In other news, a friend (who I may or may not convince to join this blog) and I are setting up a Libertarian club at our school (now that we're both done with college applications), so a website for that might eventually be going up.