It's hard to know in advance how good a government is. Five years ago, people might have held up Ireland and Iceland as well-governed successful small countries. Those no longer look so persuasive. There's a danger of confirmation bias here -- we only know they're well governed because they're successful.
Singapore, Switzerland, and Hong Kong are the successful well-governed small countries I can think of offhand. But I'm not sure the one caused the other. New York, Silicon Valley, and London are doing comparably well in terms of GDP per capita and I think quality of life, despite a lack of obvious good government and without obviously greater natural advantages. (NY has a good natural port and a good location, as do HK and Singapore.)
England did well to put their political headquarters in their most important city and port city, creating a uniquely strong center of gravity that made it much larger than other English cities, which gave it advantages over anywhere else and momentum to this day.
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)?