Fair enough, and I should have expected some disagreement to be forthcoming! Obviously NL2 does serve as a good starting point for learning while a player is still becoming familiar with the rules and gameplay mechanics, gaining enough experience to quickly fold obviously bad hands out of position, and so on - kind of like play-money games except for trivial amounts of actual cash.
But it doesn't take a genius to beat NL25, and I think some microstakes players simply lack the confidence to move up, mistakenly thinking that everyone at the higher level will be some kind of great player. I moved straight into NL50 from STTs, and was surprised at how easy the games were to learn to beat; I had to adjust a bit and endure the usual swings of negative variance and tilt-induced spew-offs before becoming a winning player, but didn't lose a huge amount initially. In my opinion there's now a substantial gap in required skill between NL50 and NL100, although that might just reflect my own massive ignorance so far of the game.
So you guys may be right to find fault in what I said, and perhaps I overstated my case, as a truly inexperienced player without much confidence would probably get mauled a bit more than I did at NL25 and NL50, as I already had the foundational experience of beating slowly-increasing stakes in STTs. In fact I would still recommend STTs as the way to go for a beginning player, although the microstakes there do seem a bit less fishy than when I started with them in late 2010.
This might be a controversial position to take, but I believe that microstakes cash-game players should try the next-higher level once they have around 23 or more buy-ins at the current level: if you can beat NL2, for example, then try playing a single table of NL5 once you have $46 - the worst that can happen is you lose $5 and have to keep playing NL2 with a bankroll of twenty buy-ins, which is enough for a decent player without a risk-taking style (which is very unlikely to be the optimal style for NL2 anyway). The idea is to cautiously take shots at the next level once you are a proven winning player, and have a reasonably solid bankroll, at your current level - you don't need to be securely rolled for the next level before even trying it (although it's a common misconception that you do). Absolutely do not bust your bankroll, but also be aware that the variance in microstakes cash-games is often massively overstated, and also that it's not the end of the world for most players to bust a microstakes bankroll once in their lives. Also consider what not moving up in a timely fashion is costing you - bankroll management has to be optimised just as much as the play of actual hands, or else you end up suffering huge opportunity costs as a player in the long term.
As one last desperate attempt to salvage my first post, I'd like to modify my initial statement to "Every player should be willing to INVEST [rather than lose] a few hundred dollars", because poker is an activity worth some financial outlay - a hobby that can potentially pay substantial amounts of money - so you should be willing to have a few hundred bucks tied up in your online account(s): you will have anyway if you make it to the higher stakes. Investing as much of your own money as you can afford in the beginning could well speed up the process of getting to the mid-stakes, if you work hard on improving your game; also with reasonable bankroll management you will never lose your initial deposit entirely. (However, this view might fundamentally contradict this site's philosophy.) Also, even if you lose that money forever, your contribution to the poker economy could well be greater than we realise, due to the multiplier effect of economics, and could help to keep the game going for everyone in some small but meaningful way.
