Dr. Ron Paul has received the Hayek Medal 2026, the highest honor awarded by the German Hayek Society at its annual conference that took place in Münster from May 22 to 23. As a board member, I had the honor of delivering the laudatio for Dr. Paul.  

Murray Rothbard’s discussion of the radio spectrum and waterways in Man, Economy, and State was an early and remarkably systematic attempt to drag two supposedly “exceptional” resources back into the ordinary law of property. In 1962, he argued that usable radio frequencies were scarce and therefore ownable, and that fishing areas in oceans could likewise be appropriated, bounded, and exchanged.

You know we’re living in topsy-turvy times when the central bank does everything in its power to stop full-service banking in favor of fractional-reserve banking. The reason: success in the former exposes the structural flaws in the latter. Should the public catch on, the system could buckle simply by too many people asking for their money back.

In our modern, Western world, many justify the state and its policies because of the presupposition that the state—and the state uniquely—is an indispensable service-provider of essential services that could not or would not be provided by the free market or which would be underprovided were it not for the state’s collective provision. This is the public goods argument.