Have not worked for a boss since 1983. Self employment suits me better. Have done building, importing, farming, house renovation, manufacturing and online retail. You need to understand there will be problems and enjoy solving them. Currently still do some small scale manufacturing and online retail. Have considered doing a coffee green beans and roasted beans business with online sales accepting Bitcoin payment only only as there's currently nobody in New Zealand that I know off offering this. But in the neoliberal FIRE economy that still dominates the crony capitalist western economies (and has done since the 1980s) by far the most profitable of my businesses has been real estate. Have made far more for far less work flipping properties than any other business, and in New Zealand property flipping is essentially/effectively exempt from CGT. So have made more (tax free) profits via real estate than any actual productive work providing goods and services- just shows how wrong our economic and monetary/financial system incentives and rewards are. Do not see the future as so bright however as the fiat system has been leveraged to the max and the price of fiat money/debt cannot logically keep declining as it did from mid 1980s till about 2023.

Under the tax law of almost all democracies Bitcoin has been arbitrarily defined as a commodity- one that is KYCed, tracked and traced and citizens are allowed to use as a speculative commodity. If however citizens choose to use Bitcojn as a MoE almost all jurisdictions require that to comply with their tax laws the person spending Bitcoin account for the difference in its value from the time it was acquired to when it is disposed of in the purchase transaction. This makes it extremely cumbersome and inconvenient for citizens of most countries to use Bitcoin as a MoE- although it is not outright banned, it does infer complex transactions recording and calculations upon relative value and ultimately the payment of tax on any capital gains enjoyed by the citizen. This is the law and although in practice it is not always enforced, most people in most countries where Bitcoin can be legally used as a MoE these highly inconvenient tax obligations do exist. In most autocracies, Like Thailand, Russia, China, Turkey etc= MoE use of Bitcoin is outright banned. Bitcoin when used as a MoE is a potential threat to the fiat operators hegemony over MoE and they do not want that so have created these outright bans or in more 'liberal democracies' sly but comprehensive obstruction. Most Bitcoiners struggle to even understand the nature and scale of the problem and the extent to which their governments have slyly obstructed use of the P2P payments protocol.

If I was able to I would go and try them- here in New Zealand we have very few retailers accepting although there is some uptake in Queenstown where there is a lot of international tourism coming in and a startup offering a payments platform via LN - they've got about 20 retailers so far accepting. I like to try any food outlet or bar that accepts LN/BTC as they tend to be better than average. But if Steak n Shake do not get enough customer uptake they may just become another failed adoption attempt that does not gain sufficient increased turnover to justify the effort required.

I hope they get the sufficient use by customers to make this worthwhile. What percentage of their sales are BTC denominated?

Cash is legal tender. Bitcoin is not. Use of cash for payment implies zero capital gain tax obligations upon the spender or the receiver. A retailer cannot reasonably be expected to check the source of cash used by customers but a retailer could, arguably, be expected to know that most Bitcoin customers will not be complying with the absurdly onerous tax recording and reporting obligations that apply to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is effectively impractical for legal use as a MoE- this is the tax law in almost all jurisdictions where it is not explicitly outlawed.

Spar is taking an apparently bold stand and is almost certainly instantly converting sats received to fiat to avoid its own direct CGT reporting requirements but does risk unwelcome attention from tax authorities. If their acceptance of Bitcoin fails to deliver worthwhile increased sales they might quietly drop the offering.

Over time several retailers have briefly accepted Bitcoin to then drop it as insufficient additional turnover results.

'Oh look Spar accept Bitcoin- we live in a liberal and free market democracy' No, MoE adoption has been successfully obstructed and few if any of the isolated cases of large adoptees of acceptance have enjoyed sufficient support to sustain their acceptance.

The sly obstruction of Bitcoin MoE is being done subtly to prevent mass scale adoption that would be a threat to fiat- so far this has been largely successful, and no ugly outright ban has been required.

So they 'allow' small traders to operate under the radar but any larger retailer is going to have accountants/tax consultants who will advise that while the retailer itself may not be breaching tax law, as long as they convert immediately upon transaction to fiat, their customers mostly will not likely be recording, reporting and paying the tax due on their purchases. The retailer thus could risk being identified as enabling/association with tax evasion by its customers. Most large retailers will run a mile from taking such a risk of association with tax code violation. The whole thing is slyly intended to 'discourage' (obstruct) adoption by retailers by making legally compliant retail level MoE use of Bitcoin effectively impractical.

Are capital gains on Bitcoin not taxed in Europe?

How can you reasonably expect regulatory approval when virtually none of the spenders will be compliant with current tax law obligations?

MoE use of Bitcoin/LN requires extraordinary recording and tax calculations which render it effectively impractical to achieve in a legally compliant manner.

This is no accident- it is the fiat operators protecting their invaluable MoE hegemony. This is the sly obstruction of bitcoin MoE adoption.

Bitcoin is being relentlessly captured and controlled by the fiat debt slavery bankers cartel (banks and government).

What the fock can you do about it except hope enough people want to be free, not farmed?

Some people struggle to cope with a life without work. They lose sense of purpose and order. The fiat debt slavery financial system farms them to the end.

House price inflation relative to fiat is a thing of the past. The price of money declined more or less steadily from the late 1980s until after Covid. Now it cannot decline further and is likely to rise or stay around where it is for the foreseeable. House price increases are thus not likely in the future...more probable - a gradual decline.

Feminism...science as a religion. Educating women into a science based worldview makes them increasingly materialistic and less inclined, even fit, to have children.

Fiat money itself is not a major problem if applied carefully recognising its true nature and risks, but crony fiat such as the western world has applied since neoliberal deregulation of banking allowed banks to issue new fiat debt toward any purpose regardless of whether it can reasonably be expected to increase the productive capacity and output of the host economy- thus since the 1980s housing/real estate has become inflated and productive investments and infrastructure have declined. Why do so few people, even Bitcoiners understand this?

Trump is a clown...managing the decline of empire. All hollow man bluff and bluster. Pumping his own shitcoin while telling BRICS nations they must not use other currency for trade settlement than USD. Nobody will take him seriously anymore. Xi and Putin have already told him to get fucked with his empty threats that he cannot enforce and now EU will do the same if they have any sense. Its OVER US EXCEPTIONALISTS. The game is up. Can you sell $7 Trillion USTs by Christmas without triggering a run on the bank?

Healthcare system here in New Zealand is almost free of corruption. It sometimes lacks funding when, as now, we have a right wing corporate sponsored government, but overall the public health system here provides care at a reasonable cost and quality.

We do have private medical providers but they are mostly only used by the wealthy.

I hear the US Health system is perhaps the most inefficient and inequitable health system in the world.

In some instances the free market does not provide as well as a well managed public service model.

Public education is always going to be influenced by the political fashions of the day- just as private education will always be driven by the profit motive. For public education to be driven by the predominant beliefs at a particular time is not inherently bad.

Yeah but look at where that GDP occurs- nearly all of it is internal- India is still about 30th on the ranking of trading nations in terms of value of goods imported and exported. India is a giant self contained economy with very little external trade relative to its size- nearly all of its production and consumption is internal- it is not a big player in international trade. It is an insular, almost isolated, in terms of trade, giant. It is not competitive internationally because it is still riven with the dysfunctional political structures and economy left by British Imperialism. Unlike China, India has still not built its own governance structures and strategy to confront, adapt, contend and succeed in the global economy. It is instead consumed with its own internal and regional issues (often issues left by the British) and does not have a cohesive strategy to grow and advance its international competitiveness. Trumps sanctions may help somewhat, but they also might not and they are anyway to remain subject to the whims of an external power, not to be the driver of your own destiny.

Yuval Harari has talked about some aspects of this in '21 Lessons for the 21st Century'. The age of algorithms knowing more about you, than you do!