Five years ago, people might have held up Ireland and Iceland as well-governed successful small countries.
Iceland and ireland, like a great many other countries, allowed their banks to behave irresponsibly. When the banks imploded, Ireland bailed them out, and made incompetent and criminal bankers entirely whole. Iceland took the other extreme, declared the bankers broke, and told the creditors to take a hike.
If one is doing something badly wrong, the other is probably doing something right. They are unlikely to both be badly run.
Iceland and ireland, like a great many other countries, allowed their banks to behave irresponsibly.
This, right here, is the evidence that their governments weren't quite as effective as we thought beforehand.
If one is doing something badly wrong, the other is probably doing something right.
This doesn't follow. It might be that both, one, or neither have responded sensibly to the crisis. Different circumstances call for different measures, and all that. And "bail out" or "let fail" isn't the complete universe of policy measures.
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)?