It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life. - B. F. Skinner

Now that we know how positive reinforcement works, and why negative doesn't, we can be more deliberate and hence more successful, in our cultural design. We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled, though they are following a code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under the old system, nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That's the source of the tremendous power of reinforcement - there's no restraint and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave - the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises.

The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread.

A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.