Your standard of living depends on staying in the good graces of the government—good graces that can quickly be lost by appearing to go against them.

First of all, your standard of living heavily depends on how big a network of friends and family you have. If it's zero, then as a guy your life won't be very interesting, and as a gal you might run out of non-exploitative choices.

Second, about good graces and such - yeah, doing political activism you might start having problems with banking and many other things.