I think that there are often creative solutions that people who aren't serious about seasteading fail to notice. For example: you could take advantage of already existing shipping lanes to build you seastead and thereby reduce the shipping cost for importing food.
Personally, I think that they will start off as residential housing that isn't in international waters. It is much easier to correct errors when you're a mile away from help. It will also help them see unexpected errors they hadn't thought about (without the drastic downside of failing in the middle of the ocean).
I also think that they need to come up with a mathematical lay out of the required energy, water, building materials, etc and calculate how much each of these things is going to cost. They give a list of the different technologies they plan on using, but don't list how much they will cost and how much energy they produce. This isn't very helpful.
Also, the digression that happens below really made me see why EY put such an emphasis on "politics is the mind killer"
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)?