Why does someone who writes great sci-fi suddenly have social capital to weigh in on industry and politics, two things firmly outside of his wheelhouse? I get

Why does someone who writes great sci-fi suddenly have social capital to weigh in on industry and politics, two things firmly outside of his wheelhouse? I get it, it's fashionable in Europe to hate billionaire American industrialists, but at what point did our hatred of capitalists (note: I don't hate capitalists) decide to overshadow our, you know, lifelong lust for the stars? Is there anyone else trying to build actual habitats (for actual people, not just a handful of taikonauts) in orbit on a timescale that would let people like Mr Stross and I see them (and perchance even use them) in our lifetime? The machinery of the state that European types like Stross seem to deify have not even announced plans in this direction, much less assembled teams and factories to move toward it. ESA and NASA and JAXA (nor Roscosmos or CNSA) ain't it, even if you 10x'd their funding. These are war and reconnaissance and research organizations, moving bulk humans off planet is completely orthogonal to any of their goals, stated or actual. Every time I read a technologist's screed against Musk or Bezos or Zuckerberg (three people whose combined lifetime works do not even scratch a fraction of the economic value incinerated by the US military in 40 weeks) all I can see is sour grapes and ad hominem. These people did not create nor perpetuate the attributes of the dystopia you claim to reside in (that was the CIA). (It's also not actually a dystopia, or anything resembling one; ask any of the two billion people lifted out of dirt poverty (largely due to technology!) in the last three decades.) The old planet will go to hell in its own way from its own inhabitants. I'd rather live in space where it's safer. (Also, how cool would it be to escape before Earth is finally fully conquered? This would mean that humans as a species successfully avoid a total hierarchy.)