Oh, interesting; I wasn't even aware that he'd written anything in the Culture universe after Look To Windward since there was such a long hiatus after that one

Oh, interesting; I wasn't even aware that he'd written anything in the Culture universe after Look To Windward since there was such a long hiatus after that one. I'll have pick up his last few books. I still think there's a gap between individuals not having to exercise much self-restraint because nearly anything can be provided to them on demand at no cost because goods and services are too cheap to meter in the Culture and the real world where individuals have to exercise considerable self restraint to hold the means of production by the community and for the community. If the Culture is socialism, it's post-scarcity socialism, which is not a form which most people would recognize.