According to O. Shane Balloun's excellently referenced paper to which Hyena linked, a seastead/shipstead just outside the contiguous zone (24 nautical miles offshore), which does not exploit natural resources, and has a zero-tolerance illegal drug policy, will enjoy little interference from Coast Guard.
There are many other challenges ahead, and we don't have Thiel's investment, but it is launching such a shipstead off the SF Bay Area that two former Seasteading Institute employees and I are working on at Blueseed.
and has a zero-tolerance illegal drug policy
WTF? That's... worse than living on the mainland!
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)?