EVE is post-scarcity, to capsuleers.
I think the problem is that the players are lacking in the commodity that the characters have the most.
Time.
Immortal.
That means that you (personally) as an immortal can be richer than nations if you bother to gain more than you spend every day.
The Culture is a shangri-la Star Trek kind of future, where humans are fundamentally better than regular humans because of the tech that they use.
It even shares the same fallacy that Star Trek does, once you are living in a post-scarcity society you will automatically start doing 'higher' things and have 'higher' standards morally.
Which of course is complete and utter bullshit, even in the Star Trek universe where the other cultures live in the a different culture in a different post-scarcity society and they hold completely different ideals and goals.
Klingons and Ferengi for example.
In the Culture the homogenization of the Culture is done through exactly the same means as the capsuleers are controlled through in New Eden.
The technology that makes the individuals superior to those that are not living in the post-scarcity society is the thing that actually restricts the freedom of choice of those individuals.
The Culture has an installed neural net that enables you to be an informorph, pretty much every AI can access it and tweak it, controlling you completely in the process.
EVE has the pod and its interface.
The Powers That Be control what you can access through it, what you can interact with.
Controlling the results of your actions completely in the process.