> There are apparently no sociopaths – Culture has to recruit an outsider when they need one

Eh, I mean Gurgeh was borderline, and a number of other Culture characters are extremely maladjusted (particularly the drones, actually).

> But the existence of post-scarcity in-vitro development means you could raise an army of clones if you wanted, and would be free to isolate them and indoctrinate similar beliefs. The fact that grabby citizens haven’t overrun Culture shows that these actions are blocked, either tacitly or overtly.

Or just that that would be an absolutely _bizarre_ thing to do and that someone unstable enough to do it probably wouldn't last long.

> and would be free to isolate them and indoctrinate similar beliefs

IIRC that sort of thing _wouldn't_ be allowed; the Culture was pretty big on individual rights. You wouldn't go to jail, but you would get a drone that would stop you from doing it.

> or is interested in simulating sentient life.

There are at least two storylines about that and significant discussion of the ethics (the Culture at best doesn't approve and may see it as a crime).

> The Minds are perfectly capable of creating avatars which would be more effective than any of the characters shown.

Again, it's explicitly mentioned at least once that the minds struggle with doing extremely nasty stuff (which makes sense; there's definitely _some_ alignment going on), and that SC is a tool for that.

I don't disagree that you can read the Culture as a dystopia (though it's a lot less obvious a reading than it would be for, say the Star Trek Federation, which could easily be read as a military junta with good PR), but most of their points aren't particularly compelling.

> IIRC that sort of thing _wouldn't_ be allowed; the Culture was pretty big on individual rights. You wouldn't go to jail, but you would get a drone that would stop you from doing it.

In one of the stories we spend quite a bit of time with an outright cult that has its members eating literal garbage and getting very sick because the AIs didn't want to infringe on their personal liberty.

I read that bit as a critique of allowing such self destructive behavior in the name of personal freedom. Sometimes people just need a dope slap before they get themselves in too much trouble.