This is a tough one. One of my favorite authors is writing an idea set with which I generally agree, through a style convention that I've never been able to get into. There's this flavor I get from a lot of older sci fi, a taste I get in the back of my throat, where no matter who the author is or what they're writing about I'm back in junior year english holding a copy of 1984. Everything maps onto the real world too closely. The gender roles debate is about gender roles. Capitalism vs socialism is about capitalism vs socialism. The answers to "who does this remind you of" are correct or incorrect. When Leguin's characters move within and interact with her world, she largely avoids this problem, which is impressive to me. For example at some points I was backhandedly reminded ot some things that had happened in a semiegalitarian group I have belonged to. However they also spend a lot of time explaining things to each other, gorgeous well developed explanations that in a fiction piece I would still prefer to infer. I think some of this is a function of the book's age; Leguin had to do more broad strokes worldbuolding because no one had done it for her. But I was still left craving something like a character study or slice of life novella that could assume the world and just write within it, rather than reminding me so many times that you can just take your fair share of food and not pay money for it.