Yes, because they are obsolete and a waste of taxpayer money. Trading old books is fine but currently many book authors make less than minimum wage for creating content. If we want high quality content we have to find a way that quality creators can make a good living. Encouraging more widespread and common use of content without paying for it will destroy the industry. It's why no new intellectual content such as movies, video games, software, books, music, pharmaceuticals comes out of China. Is that what we want here?
I like the idea of these little free libraries, rather than throw unwanted books in the garbage. Only the people who want the books take them. Hopefully they bring some to share for those they take. I’ve been President of the local library board and find that the “professional” librarians are arrogant. When books are donated, they never go into the collection, if they are more than 2 years old. They go into annual book sales where they are sold for a nickel, even if they were a $50 book originally.
When the library buys new books (they have a generous acquisition allowance in this town) the librarians don’t put them on the circulation shelf until all of them have read the book first. This takes a while, so I generally buy my own copy because I don’t want to wait. I like to own my own copies anyway because I like to go over the text if I like the book. I like to re-read the best parts. But, after a while, I collect too many books and I have to shed some of them.