Books about Abolish from Amazon.com

When the U.S. Congress created the Federal Radio Commission in 1927, what we now call cyberspace was just "ether." Broadcasting had only begun to carry tinny human voices and music across the fields and prairies, while Sunday afternoon phone calls to Aunt Mabel snaked through wires below, courtesy of an army of operators who switched each circuit by hand. It didn't take long, though, for the wires and airwaves to fill up with untrammeled chatter, so much so that by 1934 after complaints by the Navy that ship to shore communications had become hopelessly chaotic, and under the unproved but widely held belief that the broadcast spectrum was a finite natural resource all federal authority over electronic communications was forged into a new, powerful Federal Communications Commission. The amount of information traversing the airwaves has increased a million fold since 1927, but has the FCC changed along with the technology?
The answer, according to Peter W. Huber, in Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm, is an emphatic No. In this well researched, lively, even witty polemic, Huber recounts the history of telecommunications over the last century to argue that the FCC "should have been extinguished years ago." With scarcity of communications channels no longer an issue, and the virtual elimination of distinctions between carriage and broadcast,the Commission's anachronistic laws have no basis for existence, and have in fact impeded growth and progress to the tune of billions of lost dollars. Today, the "telecosm," that complex universe of invisible communications traffic, has expanded, supplanted, and subdivided itself many times over with each new technological breakthrough. Cable television, direct broadcast satellite, cell phones, the V chip, Caller ID, personal computers, and the Internet have transformed the world. Huber argues that large bureaucratic entities like the FCC fail to adjust to such rapidly changing technologies because they see their mission as maintaining the status quo, and that instead of preserving the rights of common citizens they actually favor rich monopolies. Addressing charged points of conflict such as free speech vs. censorship, privacy vs. right to know, and market vs. controlled pricing, Law and Disorder in Cyberspace energetically proposes that sensible national telecommunications policies evolve through common law--the accretion of decisions arrived at in specific cases where basic principles such as private property and fair business practice are challenged and upheld--and not through the top down, government imposition of inflexible regulatory mandates created in the vacuum of uninformed, theoretical disussion.
Given the heated climate on Capitol Hill surrounding debate over ways to reduce federal spending, Peter Huber's arguments are timely, urgent, and meticulously documented. Law and Disorder in Cyberspace is not only informative and entertaining, but will be one of those rare books that will influences public policy before the end of this decade..
Price: $119.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"The Paul Revere of globalization's woes."-The New York Times, on the author

As the United States makes much of its desire to globalize democracy, in 10 Reasons to Abolish the IMF & World Bank's updated 2nd edition, Dr. Danaher finds democracy ill-equipped for globalization. Suggesting a radical regime change, Danaher powerfully shows the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the WTO and World Bank and its unelected global government. This regime, he argues, is beyond reform.

Global Exchange cofounder Kevin Danaher is among globalization's leading critics. His articles appear in a variety of magazines and top daily papers.

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Price: $4.38 [Notify me when price goes down.]

InRonald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Paul Lettow explores the depth and sophistication of President Ronald Reagan’s commitment to ridding humankind permanently of the threat of nuclear war.
Lettow’s narrative spans the start of Reagan’s presidency and the 1986 Reykjavík summit between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, during which America’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a defining issue. Lettow reveals SDI for what it was: a full-on assault against nuclear weapons waged as much through policy as through ideology. While cabinet members and advisers played significant roles in guiding American defense policy, it was Reagan himself who presided over every element, large and small, of this paradigm shift in U.S. diplomacy.
Lettow conducted interviews with several former Reagan administration officials, and he draws upon the vast body of declassified security documents from the Reagan presidency; much of what he quotes from these documents appears publicly here for the first time. The result is the first major work to apply such evidence to the study of SDI and superpower diplomacy. This is a survey that doesn’t merely add nuance to the existing record, but revises our
very understanding of the Reagan presidency..
Price: $2.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Politics, Religion and Death tells what life in the state legislature is really like through the eyes of a lobbyist; the good, the bad, and the ugly! It is all there. Wedekind shows us the impact of religious fundamentalism on the Kentucky legislature, describing scenes many will find hard to believe. We are taken through a death row execution; the trials of an innocent man on death row; the trauma of a juvenile sentenced to be executed; and the efforts of many people of faith, and humanists, to improve the system..
Price: $16.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $9.18 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The income tax wasn't integral to anything the Founders of this country had in mind and it wasn't integral to anything they designed. Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax shows where the income tax and the IRS came from, and recounts not only how they came to be but why. What makes Richman's analysis different is that he shows that the special evils of the IRS and income tax are not accidental, something that can be eliminated just by putting the right people in charge or by offering a few reforms here and there. They are intrinsic to the purpose for which the IRS and the income tax exist. And that's why Richman proposes that the whole thing just be repealed. This book shows how the income tax makes you poorer. Reading Richman's discussion of it will make you richer..
Price: $4.69 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) is the American individualist anarchist and legal theorist, known mainly for setting up a commercial post office in competition with the government and thereby being shut down. But he was also the author of some of the most radical political and economic writings of the 19th century, and continues to have a huge influence on libertarian thinkers today. He was both a dedicated opponent of slavery in all its form, even going so far as to advocate guerrilla war to stop it, but also a dedicated opponent of the federal invasion of the South and its postwar reconstruction.

This collection was selected personally by Murray Rothbard as his best work. It includes "Trial by Jury," which argues for the idea of jury nullification, that is, the right of the jury to reject the law under which a defendant is tried. It also includes his "Letter to Grover Cleveland," which remains one of the most rigorous pieces of political argument ever penned. Finally, it includes his classic work "No Treason," which argues that the U.S. Constitution is not a social contract at all and that it cannot bind the current generation.

Spooner was obviously a great dissident -- and one of the most brilliant thinkers of the 19th century and an American original. His influence has been quiet but very long and pervasive.

The title here is of Rothbard's own choosing, but it sums up the theme of his best work.

419 pages, paperback, 2008.
Price: $24.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]