TV licenses were not created with the
aim to prosecute individuals in court, but to find a sustainable way to fund
public TV. If too many people are refusing to pay these licenses, maybe it is
time to consider a new mechanism to fund public television.
Tax laws and fiscal regulations were not
designed to pursue the low-income population that fail to accurately report on their income, but to make sure that
those who generate wealth out of wealth, thanks to their privileged position,
contribute back to the costs of the common system that helps them sustain their
businesses.
Work redundancy procedures were not
conceived to make business life difficult by protecting lazy employees. They
were not designed either to make the lives of good employees miserable when
companies want to unfairly dismiss them. These procedures originated from the
need to make sure that people in business think before they act. They aim at
ensuring that staff is recognised as a core piece of business success.
In all cases, perception of fairness
boils down to admitting that laws are intimately related to the reasons why
they were created in the first place. These reasons are what we usually call
the spirit of the law.
Those who strictly follow the law but
fail to support the spirit of the law can be openly considered cheats. When
they are fully aware that there is something morally not right in their
behaviour is twice as unjustifiable.
Most times, high technical and
legislative knowledge is required to avoid complying with the spirit of a law.
Thus, avoiding the spirit is, by all means, a deliberate decision.
Laws need to continuously evolve to
fight imaginative financial/tax
engineering. It is a never ending race: “Every
law has its loophole”.
As consumers, employees and citizens,
it is in our hand to support with our behaviour those businesses and people
that not only stick to the law but above all follow the spirit of the law.
