Smith is a Libertarian. He can write very well, but he can also descend to political preaching, and I'm not very fond of political preaching of any stripe. He assumes that a government and society in line with his beliefs would be utopia and builds his stories from there, and that just doesn't work for me no matter what the belief in question is. We've been trying since Mohenjo-Daro, and we haven't come up with utopia yet; if we ever do, it's going to be something we haven't thought of yet, because nothing we
have thought of will get us there*. The whole utopia thing is
xkcd 808 all over again.
*except putting me in charge; that would work, honest.