I started reading the Culture series based on a few recommendations here, and I've really been enjoying it so far. The stories make for good reading, though the

I started reading the Culture series based on a few recommendations here, and I've really been enjoying it so far. The stories make for good reading, though the nature of the society hasn't been explored that well, and I guess never will now, leaving a lot of open questions about the nature of humanity and AI. A few that it's brought me to ponder: Are humans capable of living in a society where we know that machines rule us unquestionably, we can never do anything as well as a machine can, and anything we could ever want is provided to us free, so much so that there isn't even any point to the existence of money? Would we all just collectively flip out or something? For that matter, what happens if an ordinary Culture person decides to take a trip to some foreign capitalist society? Presumably the trip would have to be approved by Contact or something, which seems kind of ominous by itself. Where would they get money to go do touristy things in that society? Does the culture make money in that society somehow, and give anybody who wants to visit an unlimited pile of it? Or is it limited somehow? Exactly what makes the Mind AIs free from all of the mental issues and personality flaws that have caused Human-led societies so many issues? Especially when we see that the human-level drones seem to have a rather ordinary level of positive and negative personality traits. Exactly how does this society go about deciding which Minds decide what? Do the Minds vote or something? If so, how is it decided which Minds get a vote? Which Minds decide when and how to produce more Minds, and how to train/educate them? Essentially, what is the structure of the Mind-government? Do the humans keep track of the going-ons of the Mind government, however it works, and how do they feel about having zero say about what happens there?