I read the book, and I didn't see much info addressing the criticism of growing hydroponic food. Also, I think that they need to show the math involved with how much energy they will be required to produce food, water, etc. The book just provides a list of the possible technologies.
You can check the book out for yourself at: http://seasteading.org/book_beta/section_index.html
Many countries and polities don't produce enough food, i.e. Singapore, NYC, etc. That is what trade is for. There is no particular reason a city state can't thrive without a native agriculture industry.
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)?