The cost would be very high, but the potential profits in the hypothetical case of success (i.e. establishing a functional seastead with de facto full sovereignty) are vastly higher.
Er, what profits are those exactly?
Government of decent quality is in severely short supply nowadays. If you manage to create a functional truly sovereign government and run it with a modicum of competence, even if it's just a tiny statelet, masses of people will be willing to pay handsomely for the privilege of taking their business there.
Even if you can't come up with a regime that would offer superior governance across the board (though there's no excuse not to), you can always target some particular industry that's been regulated into oblivion or where prohibitive barriers to entry hav...
Recently the relatively awesome entrepreneur invested 1.25 million USD into this (seasteading institute website here).
It seems such a wonderful concept, finally somewhere where new forms of government could be tried out. But I'm just wondering how in the world they hope to deal with existing governments since their reaction to any kind of serious alternatives, especially one that either economically or ideologically presented a significant challenge, is bound to not be positive.
I was just wondering what LWer thoughts are on this matter? Also has there been any discussion of seasteading in the past that I've missed? Also I'm wondering if anyone would hazard to perhaps offer a prediction or judge how likley this is to succeed (maybe on predictionbook)?