The solution is to make friends with people who are even richer than you. So join a country club.
The people in the country club are more experienced at being rich and they better know how to abuse their money. You certainly cannot trust other rich people, in fact those country club rich people are the people you'd be least able to trust.
They are richer than you sure, but that doesn't mean they'll respect you.
This got rated up to 4? People, please apply for jobs at the CIA, you pass the paranoia qualification.
Here's a helpful tip when talking to friends who maybe don't have the same number of digits in their bank account balances: shut the fuck up and do not discuss your income. Holy shit, how hard is it. I've talked with friends about their favorite sexual positions with their wives, but talking about income? Absolutely fucking off limits.
By the way, life gets better once you finally graduate high school. Just thought I'd throw out some advice which is relevant to you.
Who are you talking to? Who is in highschool? And what makes you think that the girl you date isn't after your money? Paranoia isn't really necessary, if you have something people might want you wont be able to trust them and if you have a lot of money which is a perfect illustration of having something people want, you can try to hide that fact for as long as you possibly can but eventually somebody will discover what you are worth.
It could be an ex gf. It could be your wife. It could be your best friend. And once that happens it's going to spread.
People generally just don't monitor regularly the trash of their neighbours...
They do in some neighborhoods. Especially rich neighborhoods. Trust me the elites are very nosy people and do not respect each others privacy at all. This is exactly what I meant when I said when you make the new rich or elite friends you won't be able to trust people.
In poor or middle class neighborhoods privacy is respected. Nobody is going to dig up dirt on your or look through your garbage. In a rich community or neighborhood they'll run backround checks on you because they can afford to and because they don't respect privacy.
And you wont really know this until you actually meet people who live in these communities or live in one yourself. Everybody knows everyone elses skeletons.
It depends on the person, my guess is you live near a person or talk to a person on a regular basis who has more money than $75K a year. Being rich doesn't mean your elitist, you are confusing the two. I've talked to several very trusting, very level-headed people who make upwards of $100K a year, but they aren't assholes about it. They didn't go to the ivy league schools, they don't drive a 2011 car, they have a decent house, but its nothing spectacular compared to the area.
Yeah, there are rich people like Paris Hilton who everyone knows is rich, but there are a lot more people who are moderately rich who you wouldn't know that they were unless you saw their financial statement or were good friends with them.
Oh, and by the way, a lot of the people who act really "rich" really aren't, they just live on credit (you know the people, the ones who went to the Ivy League schools, drive new cars, have the huge homes, etc) and while they may be simi-rich, they live beyond their means.
Of course not everyone rich is elitist. But it's still true being rich causes or decreases ones ability to trust. It reduces trust. You ask any rich person this and they'll tell you that having money doesn't make their life easier or less complicated, it only breeds distrust and conflict among themselves and their families.
And yes some will try to not look and live rich but ultimately the attitude of a person who has money is always going to be slightly different from the attitude of a person without money. It's very difficult not to take on the change in attitude that goes with having money even if you are modest about it and try not to dress or act rich, there is still some differences in mannerism, in thinking, that can be detected by people who aren't rich.
I don't understand why you think the GP's post is a joke. The median individual income in this country is around 34k, which in urban areas can be barely enough to get by without public subsidies. Federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour, is not even near a living wage in urban areas, and is barely a living wage in cheaper, rural areas of the country.
A decade ago I lived on 8K a year. I did it by having two roommates and living in an area with a low cost of living. In an urban area I would have needed Section 8 subsidies (that's your answer to your question about how the GP pays rent) and food stamps to survive.
Try living on $8000 a year today. Not a decade ago. $8000 a year is absolute poverty. It's just enough money to survive day to day. If we want to go there then I guess we could say that some people who are homeless living in cabins are happy or some people living in prison cells are happy. But if we want to be realistic, if you make $8000 a year there is no physical security for you at all, and theres a lot that you can't do.
You want to travel? You can't. You want to buy a home? You can't. You want to go to school? You can't. But you can have 3 meals a day, shelter, water, internet access in most cases, basically the bare minimum of existence.
This is fine if you live like this for a short period of time but why would anyone want to live like this for a life time? There is no money for any luxury spending. There is no money for vacations. It's survival and thats it.
Man, you must know mostly well-off people! Most families I know are not making $75k, and no single people I know are making that much, and nobody feels anything close to poor. A household income of $75k is, according to some census stats, 73rd percentile: i.e. 27% of people make more, and 73% make less. If being in the richest 27% of Americans makes you feel poor, you must have a pretty inflated notion of "middle class"...
I personally make around $35k as a young single person with no debt, and feel rich, fwiw. I can't even spend it all--- after $1k/month on rent for a nice apt near the beach, and another $1k on food/car/entertainment, my expenses are pretty much covered.
Don't any of these families pay mortgages? Have college loan payments? Have debts from creditcards? Have kids? Also where do they live?
I'd say most people I know right now are struggling, and most people I know do make less than $75k, in fact most make half that amount. And most of them aren't happy about their situations either.
How old are you? If you're over 55, congratulations. If you're under 55, get a job you lazy bastard.
I used to ride the Metro Blue Line to work. I saw so many young, otherwise healthy people on the train with nothing but free time who were complaining about how SSI wasn't enough and how they hate their free Section 8 housing. But they would never go get a job, because then they'd lose "their benefits". For way too many people in this society, SSI, SDI and Section 8 are a free ticket to a life paid for by everyone else.
Well be realistic who is going to be dumb enough to take a job at McDonalds so they can lose their healthcare, get kicked out of their apartment, lose all those benefits?
Now on the other hand if they are offered a job that actually gave more benefits than section 8 and SSI and they wont take it then you can call them lazy bastards, fools, etc. I would say SSI is better than the alternative if there are no jobs, I'd say SSI is better than being criminal and going to prison.
Now if there were no SSI then they'd all be in prison and that would cost more money than if they do what they do now. Basically the same argument could be made about prison, people break the law so they could live off everyone else? Or because theres no jobs? Ultimately unless there are jobs you can choose only to spend more on section 8 or spend more building prisons, hiring cops, and judges, lawyers, etc.
So you get to wait for years on a list, and then afterwards you'll probably be living in a ghetto with other people receiving section 8.
While it is possible to live this way and pay rent, is that the same thing as saying that someone could be fairly happy living this way? Sure there will always be people who can be happy in any situation and of course living on section 8 beats living in a prison cell. But living on section 8 cannot compare to living with $75k, or even with $40-50k.
So if (1) can buy (2) and (2) gives you (3), then simplifying: (1) buys (3), or money buys happiness.
And I would disagree you can take care of a family on almost any income, far less the $75K. Most money spent by North Americans is just wasted, and $75K seems like a good number to give a persona security.
At least for Canada, where I live. not sure how that would work for the US with health care how it is.
If people could take care of a family on any income there would be no such thing as ghettos, at risk youth, and pollution wouldn't be causing so many kids to develop asthma.
A single person can protect themselves with $75k, and maybe be able to have enough money in case their wife gets sick or their parents get sick, or to have kids go to a good school in a safe neighborhood. Less than this amount and even the most basic level of security needs wont be met. Healthcare isn't free. Safe neighborhoods aren't free. Quality education isn't free. Retirement isn't free. Marriage isn't free.
I believe the study found $75,000 was a cutoff for families, not specifically for single people. My guess is that the cutoff for single people, especially young single people without large university debts, and especially if they don't live in SF or NYC, is rather lower.
I highly doubt that. Most young people do have debt. Even if they didn't have debt, a family making $75k is barely making it and in most peoples definition thats on the lower end of middle class. Now for a single person making $75k then the article makes perfect sense.
Of course, I also get food stamps, and make use of Section 8 rent subsidies, so my effective income is probably a little higher.
I'm still well below the 75k mark, but then again I'm not paying in sweat to get it either.
I even have $1400 in credit available, thanks to a couple of credit cards.
I'm fairly happy.
Some people are happy living in prison, most aren't. What you don't mention is how old you are. If you are 80 years old and can't do anything then living like that is not going to make you miserable but if you are in the prime of your life and you can't do anything, living on SSI is a virtual prison.
Unless of course you don't want to do anything?
Anyway I assume your post in a joke but if it's not then please describe what in your life is making you happy? Do you have kids? a spouse? a family? How on earth do you pay rent with only $8000?
I'd take these problems over my current circumstances, and I'm not even in debt!
When you are making $75k and you still live in your old neighborhood you might be able to hide how much you make or maybe people wont care. When you start making millions you wont be able to hide that. There is no way to hide how much you make when people can dig in your trash and find out. So even if you shred up all your bills if you have a spouse or anybody who knows they'll probably tell people.
Have you ever talked to people who have money? They don't seem to surround themselves with people they can trust. And even if you don't know anyone like that personally just look at the typical celebrities like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, or anybody who has hundreds of millions of dollars.
Or look at some of the elites who go to Ivy League schools and who have elite friends and all of them have money and none of them can trust each other. How are you going to have people you can trust when all of your people are rich elites like you? And if you have people who aren't rich elites around you then you can't trust them because they could be bribed.
You think I'm wrong? Show the flaw in my logic. Show me where trust and money correlate because I believe the correlation is increased money equals decreased trust.
Impossible. Happiness is something you should have the liberty to pursue. It's not something which should be given to people by the government. The government should provide ample opportunity and resources for people to have the option to fight or compete for happiness.
The reality we have today is that for a majority of people unless you are born to make $75k no amount of hard work or effort will allow you to reach that goal unless you break the law. It should not be so difficult for ordinary people to make $75k. The fact that so few make this much should show us not that more people need to make it, but that more people should have the ability to try to make it and be given the opportunity to do so if they have skills, talent, ambition.
I would say that $75,000 is a good estimate because the more money you have the less trust you usually have along with it. At $75,000 you have just enough money to maintain your friends, and family relations, and to be able to trust your spouse. When you start to get over this amount your friendships may begin to change as some friends will start to envy you or get jealous, you may not be able to trust your family members anymore or your spouse, as it gets into the $100,000+ and $200,000+ and $500,000+ eventually you do reach a point where you simply can't trust anybody anymore. Your spouse might have a life insurance policy on you and be waiting patiently for you to die. Your brothers and sisters might be fighting each other to win favor with you. Your friendships might be completely non-existent as none of these new friends might be real.
And if you aren't married and you don't have a strong family structure you may not even have that. What you'd have then is people dating you and you never knowing what their intentions are, who they are, or if they are trying to set you up, extort you, or marry you and try to take your money. You also wont be able to trust your friends either unless those friends make the same kind of money you are making because your poor friends could easily be bribed or payed off by your rich friends to spy on you.
Ultimately there is no increase to happiness with money beyond a certain amount because as money increases trust decreases. As trust decreases for most people stress increases. As stress increases for most people happiness decreases, unless they've had the kind of life experiences to allow them to have the emotional and psychological toolkit to manage stress of this sort.
This is why more money = more problems after a certain level. This is why getting to the top is usually more fun than being at the top.Trust is not a commodity, you cannot buy it or sell it. Love is not a commodity, you cannot buy and sell it.
1. Money cannot buy happiness, it can buy security. 2. When your loved ones are secure you are less stressed. 3. When you are less stressed you can focus more on being happy.
How much money you need is actually determined by how many people you have to care for. If you don't have any children, or a spouse, $75,000 is about right. If you have children, a wife, and a big family, $75,000 is a drop in the bucket and you'd probably need twice that much to provide for children and take care of parents or grand parents into old age.
I don't know about you but thats my formula. The amount is determined by the amount of people I have to provide security for and the overall security expense, along with whatever the expense is for my personal wellbeing. It's ultimately about people, unless you're a greedy anti-social.
Then the governments of the world will bribe, torture, threaten, everyone associated with Wikileaks everywhere and it wont just be Julian Assange being charged with rape, it will be everybody associated with Wikileaks being charged with rape, murder, tax evasion, Wikileaks will be treated like a terrorist organization.
How can Wikileaks be saved post Assange? That should be the question. Can Wikileaks as a concept even work? I suspect that against a government as mighty as the US government no matter how advanced Wikileaks ever becomes it will never be able to compare to the 600 billion dollar military budget, trained killers, operatives, satellites, and secret spy weaponry.
The point is that nobody is immune from government coercion. The government will offer bribes and when bribes don't work then there will be threats. It's very possible that everyone around Julian Assange has skeletons in their closet or has broken some law, or maybe their families are being threatened, or maybe they are being threatened with torture in forms we cannot imagine.
The point is that Julian Assange and everyone around him should have known better. The US government has unlimited resources, secret sources and methods, and will stop at nothing to accomplish its mission.
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You must choose to live in "rich neighborhoods" - which in itself includes flaunting with wealth / disregarding keeping mostly low profile.
That is a good point but it helps that all the best schools and jobs happen to float in or around those neighborhoods.
Excellent post.
The solution is to make friends with people who are even richer than you. So join a country club.
The people in the country club are more experienced at being rich and they better know how to abuse their money. You certainly cannot trust other rich people, in fact those country club rich people are the people you'd be least able to trust.
They are richer than you sure, but that doesn't mean they'll respect you.
This got rated up to 4? People, please apply for jobs at the CIA, you pass the paranoia qualification.
Here's a helpful tip when talking to friends who maybe don't have the same number of digits in their bank account balances: shut the fuck up and do not discuss your income. Holy shit, how hard is it. I've talked with friends about their favorite sexual positions with their wives, but talking about income? Absolutely fucking off limits.
By the way, life gets better once you finally graduate high school. Just thought I'd throw out some advice which is relevant to you.
Who are you talking to? Who is in highschool? And what makes you think that the girl you date isn't after your money? Paranoia isn't really necessary, if you have something people might want you wont be able to trust them and if you have a lot of money which is a perfect illustration of having something people want, you can try to hide that fact for as long as you possibly can but eventually somebody will discover what you are worth.
It could be an ex gf. It could be your wife. It could be your best friend. And once that happens it's going to spread.
People generally just don't monitor regularly the trash of their neighbours...
They do in some neighborhoods. Especially rich neighborhoods. Trust me the elites are very nosy people and do not respect each others privacy at all. This is exactly what I meant when I said when you make the new rich or elite friends you won't be able to trust people.
In poor or middle class neighborhoods privacy is respected. Nobody is going to dig up dirt on your or look through your garbage. In a rich community or neighborhood they'll run backround checks on you because they can afford to and because they don't respect privacy.
And you wont really know this until you actually meet people who live in these communities or live in one yourself. Everybody knows everyone elses skeletons.
It depends on the person, my guess is you live near a person or talk to a person on a regular basis who has more money than $75K a year. Being rich doesn't mean your elitist, you are confusing the two. I've talked to several very trusting, very level-headed people who make upwards of $100K a year, but they aren't assholes about it. They didn't go to the ivy league schools, they don't drive a 2011 car, they have a decent house, but its nothing spectacular compared to the area.
Yeah, there are rich people like Paris Hilton who everyone knows is rich, but there are a lot more people who are moderately rich who you wouldn't know that they were unless you saw their financial statement or were good friends with them.
Oh, and by the way, a lot of the people who act really "rich" really aren't, they just live on credit (you know the people, the ones who went to the Ivy League schools, drive new cars, have the huge homes, etc) and while they may be simi-rich, they live beyond their means.
Of course not everyone rich is elitist. But it's still true being rich causes or decreases ones ability to trust. It reduces trust. You ask any rich person this and they'll tell you that having money doesn't make their life easier or less complicated, it only breeds distrust and conflict among themselves and their families.
And yes some will try to not look and live rich but ultimately the attitude of a person who has money is always going to be slightly different from the attitude of a person without money. It's very difficult not to take on the change in attitude that goes with having money even if you are modest about it and try not to dress or act rich, there is still some differences in mannerism, in thinking, that can be detected by people who aren't rich.
I don't understand why you think the GP's post is a joke. The median individual income in this country is around 34k, which in urban areas can be barely enough to get by without public subsidies. Federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour, is not even near a living wage in urban areas, and is barely a living wage in cheaper, rural areas of the country.
A decade ago I lived on 8K a year. I did it by having two roommates and living in an area with a low cost of living. In an urban area I would have needed Section 8 subsidies (that's your answer to your question about how the GP pays rent) and food stamps to survive.
Try living on $8000 a year today. Not a decade ago. $8000 a year is absolute poverty. It's just enough money to survive day to day. If we want to go there then I guess we could say that some people who are homeless living in cabins are happy or some people living in prison cells are happy. But if we want to be realistic, if you make $8000 a year there is no physical security for you at all, and theres a lot that you can't do.
You want to travel? You can't. You want to buy a home? You can't. You want to go to school? You can't. But you can have 3 meals a day, shelter, water, internet access in most cases, basically the bare minimum of existence.
This is fine if you live like this for a short period of time but why would anyone want to live like this for a life time? There is no money for any luxury spending. There is no money for vacations. It's survival and thats it.
Man, you must know mostly well-off people! Most families I know are not making $75k, and no single people I know are making that much, and nobody feels anything close to poor. A household income of $75k is, according to some census stats, 73rd percentile: i.e. 27% of people make more, and 73% make less. If being in the richest 27% of Americans makes you feel poor, you must have a pretty inflated notion of "middle class"...
I personally make around $35k as a young single person with no debt, and feel rich, fwiw. I can't even spend it all--- after $1k/month on rent for a nice apt near the beach, and another $1k on food/car/entertainment, my expenses are pretty much covered.
Don't any of these families pay mortgages? Have college loan payments? Have debts from creditcards? Have kids? Also where do they live?
I'd say most people I know right now are struggling, and most people I know do make less than $75k, in fact most make half that amount. And most of them aren't happy about their situations either.
How old are you? If you're over 55, congratulations. If you're under 55, get a job you lazy bastard.
I used to ride the Metro Blue Line to work. I saw so many young, otherwise healthy people on the train with nothing but free time who were complaining about how SSI wasn't enough and how they hate their free Section 8 housing. But they would never go get a job, because then they'd lose "their benefits". For way too many people in this society, SSI, SDI and Section 8 are a free ticket to a life paid for by everyone else.
Well be realistic who is going to be dumb enough to take a job at McDonalds so they can lose their healthcare, get kicked out of their apartment, lose all those benefits?
Now on the other hand if they are offered a job that actually gave more benefits than section 8 and SSI and they wont take it then you can call them lazy bastards, fools, etc. I would say SSI is better than the alternative if there are no jobs, I'd say SSI is better than being criminal and going to prison.
Now if there were no SSI then they'd all be in prison and that would cost more money than if they do what they do now. Basically the same argument could be made about prison, people break the law so they could live off everyone else? Or because theres no jobs? Ultimately unless there are jobs you can choose only to spend more on section 8 or spend more building prisons, hiring cops, and judges, lawyers, etc.
OTOH, many, many studies show that people who are married live longer and report being happier.
When they make $75k. Maybe they should have looked into how much money these people made when they conducted these studies.
So you get to wait for years on a list, and then afterwards you'll probably be living in a ghetto with other people receiving section 8.
While it is possible to live this way and pay rent, is that the same thing as saying that someone could be fairly happy living this way? Sure there will always be people who can be happy in any situation and of course living on section 8 beats living in a prison cell. But living on section 8 cannot compare to living with $75k, or even with $40-50k.
So if (1) can buy (2) and (2) gives you (3), then simplifying: (1) buys (3), or money buys happiness.
And I would disagree you can take care of a family on almost any income, far less the $75K.
Most money spent by North Americans is just wasted, and $75K seems like a good number to give a persona security.
At least for Canada, where I live. not sure how that would work for the US with health care how it is.
If people could take care of a family on any income there would be no such thing as ghettos, at risk youth, and pollution wouldn't be causing so many kids to develop asthma.
A single person can protect themselves with $75k, and maybe be able to have enough money in case their wife gets sick or their parents get sick, or to have kids go to a good school in a safe neighborhood. Less than this amount and even the most basic level of security needs wont be met. Healthcare isn't free. Safe neighborhoods aren't free. Quality education isn't free. Retirement isn't free. Marriage isn't free.
I believe the study found $75,000 was a cutoff for families, not specifically for single people. My guess is that the cutoff for single people, especially young single people without large university debts, and especially if they don't live in SF or NYC, is rather lower.
I highly doubt that. Most young people do have debt. Even if they didn't have debt, a family making $75k is barely making it and in most peoples definition thats on the lower end of middle class. Now for a single person making $75k then the article makes perfect sense.
Life is hard enough. I don't need increased responsibility (stress) to weigh me down and prematurely age me.
I get only $8088 a year in income from SSI.
Of course, I also get food stamps, and make use of Section 8 rent subsidies, so my effective income is probably a little higher.
I'm still well below the 75k mark, but then again I'm not paying in sweat to get it either.
I even have $1400 in credit available, thanks to a couple of credit cards.
I'm fairly happy.
Some people are happy living in prison, most aren't. What you don't mention is how old you are. If you are 80 years old and can't do anything then living like that is not going to make you miserable but if you are in the prime of your life and you can't do anything, living on SSI is a virtual prison.
Unless of course you don't want to do anything?
Anyway I assume your post in a joke but if it's not then please describe what in your life is making you happy? Do you have kids? a spouse? a family? How on earth do you pay rent with only $8000?
Except #3 is not always true. A lot of us have to take enormous stress to earn our six figure salaries (to pay for security of the loved ones).
Then you can reduce your stress by not paying for your loved ones. Once you give yourself the responsibility you have to accept the stress.
Or just don't tell people how much you make...
I'd take these problems over my current circumstances, and I'm not even in debt!
When you are making $75k and you still live in your old neighborhood you might be able to hide how much you make or maybe people wont care. When you start making millions you wont be able to hide that. There is no way to hide how much you make when people can dig in your trash and find out. So even if you shred up all your bills if you have a spouse or anybody who knows they'll probably tell people.
Have you ever talked to people who have money? They don't seem to surround themselves with people they can trust. And even if you don't know anyone like that personally just look at the typical celebrities like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, or anybody who has hundreds of millions of dollars.
Or look at some of the elites who go to Ivy League schools and who have elite friends and all of them have money and none of them can trust each other. How are you going to have people you can trust when all of your people are rich elites like you? And if you have people who aren't rich elites around you then you can't trust them because they could be bribed.
You think I'm wrong? Show the flaw in my logic. Show me where trust and money correlate because I believe the correlation is increased money equals decreased trust.
Especially rich people. Which explains some of the attitudes rich people have toward life in general.
Impossible. Happiness is something you should have the liberty to pursue. It's not something which should be given to people by the government. The government should provide ample opportunity and resources for people to have the option to fight or compete for happiness.
The reality we have today is that for a majority of people unless you are born to make $75k no amount of hard work or effort will allow you to reach that goal unless you break the law. It should not be so difficult for ordinary people to make $75k. The fact that so few make this much should show us not that more people need to make it, but that more people should have the ability to try to make it and be given the opportunity to do so if they have skills, talent, ambition.
I would say that $75,000 is a good estimate because the more money you have the less trust you usually have along with it. At $75,000 you have just enough money to maintain your friends, and family relations, and to be able to trust your spouse. When you start to get over this amount your friendships may begin to change as some friends will start to envy you or get jealous, you may not be able to trust your family members anymore or your spouse, as it gets into the $100,000+ and $200,000+ and $500,000+ eventually you do reach a point where you simply can't trust anybody anymore. Your spouse might have a life insurance policy on you and be waiting patiently for you to die. Your brothers and sisters might be fighting each other to win favor with you. Your friendships might be completely non-existent as none of these new friends might be real.
And if you aren't married and you don't have a strong family structure you may not even have that. What you'd have then is people dating you and you never knowing what their intentions are, who they are, or if they are trying to set you up, extort you, or marry you and try to take your money. You also wont be able to trust your friends either unless those friends make the same kind of money you are making because your poor friends could easily be bribed or payed off by your rich friends to spy on you.
Ultimately there is no increase to happiness with money beyond a certain amount because as money increases trust decreases. As trust decreases for most people stress increases. As stress increases for most people happiness decreases, unless they've had the kind of life experiences to allow them to have the emotional and psychological toolkit to manage stress of this sort.
This is why more money = more problems after a certain level. This is why getting to the top is usually more fun than being at the top.Trust is not a commodity, you cannot buy it or sell it. Love is not a commodity, you cannot buy and sell it.
1. Money cannot buy happiness, it can buy security.
2. When your loved ones are secure you are less stressed.
3. When you are less stressed you can focus more on being happy.
How much money you need is actually determined by how many people you have to care for. If you don't have any children, or a spouse, $75,000 is about right. If you have children, a wife, and a big family, $75,000 is a drop in the bucket and you'd probably need twice that much to provide for children and take care of parents or grand parents into old age.
I don't know about you but thats my formula. The amount is determined by the amount of people I have to provide security for and the overall security expense, along with whatever the expense is for my personal wellbeing. It's ultimately about people, unless you're a greedy anti-social.
Then the governments of the world will bribe, torture, threaten, everyone associated with Wikileaks everywhere and it wont just be Julian Assange being charged with rape, it will be everybody associated with Wikileaks being charged with rape, murder, tax evasion, Wikileaks will be treated like a terrorist organization.
How can Wikileaks be saved post Assange? That should be the question. Can Wikileaks as a concept even work? I suspect that against a government as mighty as the US government no matter how advanced Wikileaks ever becomes it will never be able to compare to the 600 billion dollar military budget, trained killers, operatives, satellites, and secret spy weaponry.
The point is that nobody is immune from government coercion. The government will offer bribes and when bribes don't work then there will be threats. It's very possible that everyone around Julian Assange has skeletons in their closet or has broken some law, or maybe their families are being threatened, or maybe they are being threatened with torture in forms we cannot imagine.
The point is that Julian Assange and everyone around him should have known better. The US government has unlimited resources, secret sources and methods, and will stop at nothing to accomplish its mission.
For 1 million dollars would you claim Julian Assange raped you? Would you claim he robbed you? Would you frame up Julian Assange for murder?
For enough money anybody can be framed. It's a business and it involves operatives.