My Reality Check Bounced! - Jason Ryan Dorsey [79]
Their “make an example out of someone big” strategy worked. Busting me made national news. Politicians watched the news. They voted to change the laws.
Then I got an offer from the government. If I agreed to never make ID cards again, they agreed not to prosecute me. It was the fastest decision I ever made.
It’s been six years since I’ve held an ID card.
Every day that I wake up and have the freedom to hang out with my friends—or just to go to the bathroom when I want—I am grateful for the lesson that came with losing my business. I’ve decided that if I ever find myself having to persuade people that something I’m involved in is ethically all right, then I probably shouldn’t be doing it. You might be able to talk yourself into believing it’s ethically okay, but you’re taking a big risk assuming that a jury of your peers will reach the same not guilty conclusion.
I have to tell you, choosing an ethically solid path toward your dreams may be much more difficult, but in the end it’s a lot less stressful and you don’t have to hide it from your mom.
In only two years Blake went from poor teenager to rich twentysomething to looking at serious jail time—all because he blurred a seemingly obvious ethical line. He was lucky. He ended up with a tarnished reputation and the loss of his toys, but many people who followed in his footsteps have not been so fortunate. Since the laws about IDs were changed based on Blake’s business, people across the United States have earned long prison sentences trying to copy his early success.
SEPARATING RIGHT FROM WRONG
Some of you may read Blake’s story and think that he did nothing wrong. He didn’t force minors to buy his ID cards. They bought them of their own free will. And technically, he didn’t even break the law. My question for people who defend his scheme is one of intent. If something is legal does that alone make it ethical? I don’t think so.
If you were Blake, how would you justify to your mom taking money from thousands of minors so they could get a piece of plastic identifying them as older? Do you tell her they want to look older so they can get a better job—knowing their fake ID wouldn’t pass a basic background check? Do you tell her they want to look older so they can defend their country—knowing that lying about your age to join the armed forces is a crime? When do you admit that you have to work really hard to convince your mom, let alone someone not related to you, that these ID card orders are not for a costume party?
Obviously none of these far-fetched scenarios would fly with any halfway rational mom. But Blake—or any reasonable adult for that matter—shouldn’t need his mom to tell him what’s right and what’s wrong. At age twenty, he was old enough to know the difference. In his heart, Blake knew better. Maybe he chose not to see his business for what it was, but he couldn’t blame that on his age or lack of worldly experiences—which he initially tried to do until his attorney explained it was a losing argument.
One of the harsh realities of being a twentysomething is that you no longer have your youthfulness to fall back on to excuse poor ethical choices. It didn’t work for Blake and it won’t work for you. If you’re an adult and you commit a crime, you suffer adult-size consequences. There is no preferential treatment from a judge or jury whether you’re forty-one or twenty-one. And there is no “Get Out of Jail Free” card because you got all A’s in college and landed a good job. Twentysomethings who make ethically bad choices suffer consequences that can last a lifetime.
WHY WE CUT CORNERS
I know we all make mistakes. In fact, I’ve