"Here on land, the seasteaders propose, ideas about how to govern societies have stagnated. Politics is too entrenched..."

"... societal change comes slowly, if at all.... Seasteads would upset [the] dynamic, since each floating city would be small enough and modular enough that individuals could come and go freely, shopping for governments and social structures. If residents didn’t like one utopia, they could simply sail off to a new one.... [T]he Seasteading Institute makes clear that it will not be operating the cities itself. The particulars of each seastead’s political system should be determined by its inhabitants—or an oligarch, if that’s the way it turns out. 'Any set of rules is OK,' the organization’s FAQ page emphasizes, 'as long as the residents consent to it voluntarily and can leave whenever they choose.'"

From "Libertarians Seek a Home on the High Seas/The unlikely rise—and anti-democratic impulses—of seasteading," by Rachel Riederer in The New Republic, who observes that the seasteads represent "a very particular set of politics," politics based on the free market," and:

When [government] works, it protects the vulnerable and guards the commons—essential tasks at which the free market so often fails. Ocean dwellers will also need those protections. Much as we might like to, we can’t escape the political, even by walking into the sea.