There’s an old vaudeville gag that makes the same point even more elegantly—here, as improved on by Steve Wright: I was walking down the street with a friend the other day and a guy with a gun jumps out of an alley and says “Stick ’em up.” As I pull out my wallet, I figure, “Shouldn’t be a total loss.” So I pull out some money, turn to my friend and say, “Hey, Fred, here’s that fifty bucks I owe you.” The robber was so offended he took out a thousand dollars of his own money, forced Fred to lend it to me at gunpoint, and then took it back again.
