jsankey

I see, I did misinterpret your point somewhat. The situation is still relevant to individual would be claimants, though. Even though Egypt and Sudan don't want to claim the region I don't think they're too keen on random third parties staking a claim either. You'd be surrounded unfriendly governments.

Chilies are pretty simple to grow yourself, even just by using the seeds from a dried one. A happy plant produces lots of chilies and the freeze fine for most uses. They don't like the cold, though, so depending which part of Germany you're in you might need to keep it indoors (but still with access to a few hours of sun a day).

Exactly. It's analogous to the difference between big bang integration and continuous integration. The lesson there is: if something hurts, do it more often. Little steps let you know exactly what changed when something breaks.

Thanks for the reply Dean. It seems there is room to make this easier, although it can be hard to find and convince the market of that when there is something "good enough" out there. Hope you have some luck.

An idea, to take or leave: a very active niche for this kind of thing is parents of young children. Very young kids (babies/toddlers) in particular churn through a lot of "stuff" by growing out of it before it wears out. Parents are very active on a range of Facebook groups trading this stuff (though not usually for free, just cheap). In fact the groups are so active that I know people using them daily, and the biggest issue with offloading stuff is posting are lost in the noise. If you're looking for a nice to focus on this is a strong one.

Indeed, Freecycle have been operating in Australia for a long time. There are several other competitors too, the article doesn't make clear what Curbit's advantage/angle is. I'm all for the general idea and wish them well regardless, the amount of cheap stuff we buy and waste is astonishing.

The previous federal government in Australia introduced something along these lines: a carbon tax designed to be revenue-neutral. Compensation for lower income earners was worked into the income tax system (some also went directly to certain highly-exposed export industries).

Unfortunately thanks to incompetence in how this plan was sold by the previous government and an aggressive campaign against it by the opposition, that government lost the following election and now we have the worst of all worlds: carbon tax repealed (the only country going backwards in this regard AFAIK), compensation retained (the incoming government being too spineless to scrap it, despite themselves declaring a budget emergency) and a new braindead "direct action" policy where we now give tax dollars to polluters to encourage them to tone it down (stupidly inefficient and another hit to the budget).

It's not quite so simple. Many non-essential things are cheap (e.g. iOS games), and many essential things are expensive (e.g. housing, transport). The line between essential and luxury is also subjective. So you have to start categorising, and things get messy.

Nice straw man. I didn't even mention luxury tax, let alone promote it.

Certainly there are ways to mitigate the effect, I was just pointing out that the universality of a sales tax isn't all positive.

I took away something completely different. The OP gives herself permission to fail not because she doesn't want to put in the effort, or has any less desire to succeed.

The point is she doesn't want to be driven by fear. Fear is a powerful motivator but not necessarily a constructive one. Some people may find they lack drive without the fear of failure, but to me it seems the OP feels it more of a drag. Without the burden of fear she may feel more clarity and actually make better decisions, e.g. decisions that carry more personal risk but are better for the company/customers.

I don't think the GP was claiming it was more challenging. The point is making the tax flat doesn't help solve this key problem, so all you get is a less progressive system overall.

That's the problem, too -- it applies equally to necessities and luxuries. Sales taxes are regressive because there is a certain amount of non-discretionary spending everyone has to make, regardless of income, just to live.

But they were bootstrapped and very profitable for several years before taking any funding.