[csallen]

This reminds me of one of the musings of Charlie Munger:

"...Now there are huge implications from the fact that the human mind is put together this way. One implication is that people who create things like cash registers, which make dishonest behavior hard to accomplish, are some of the effective saints of our civilization because, as [B. F.] Skinner so well knew, bad behavior is intensely habit-forming when it is rewarded.

"And so the cash register was a great moral instrument when it was created. And, by the way, Patterson, the great evangelist of the cash register, knew that from his own experience. He had a little store, and his employees were stealing him blind, so that he never made any money. Then people sold him a couple of cash registers, and his store went to profit immediately.

"He promptly closed the store and went into the cash register business, creating what became the mighty National Cash Register Company, one of the glories of its time."

[Karellen]

That punchline is one of the funniest things I've read all week! Thanks.