Menomie, WI

Red Cedar State Trail

Run Time: 64:46 + 2-minute kick

Only one decent running day in a week-long work driving trip through Wisconsin. Weather not cooperating. One afternoon of snow flurries, but mostly it is wind that discourages leaving the warm hotel room. Wind is the dominant meteorological feature of my sales region.

The opportunity comes between Roberts (near the Minnesota border) and Eau Claire. All Trails gives me the Red Cedar State Trial, which turns out to be nearly ideal. The surface is dirt/fine gravel, my favorite. The trail follows the Chippewa River, which actually has some rapids. Not much elevation change. The trailhead is only a few miles off I-94, so access is easy.

The only issue is that the Central Northern glaciers have not yet fully receded, so my progress is halted a couple of miles in. The packed snow crosses the trail, right to the cliff’s edge, and footing is treacherous. The top of the snowpack has a level of slipperiness difficult to express in words. Frightening comes to mind. I judge that it cannot be crossed safely, and I turn around.

The trail extended beyond the trailhead to the north via an asphalt path. I used that section to complete my run, taking me to an old railroad trestle no longer in use, and blocked to keep wanderers safe, just before the river met Lake Menomin. An old factory unnamed on Apple Maps sat across the river, possibly still in use, probably near the river for chemical disposal. A pleasant, if cold, run.

I tried writing a novel a few years back that included a sub-theme of elites gaming systems for personal benefit — power, mostly. I shelved the novel, but thinking about systems gaming made me wonder what disincentives there are to attempting to game a system. Why shouldn’t we try to orchestrate advantage and control? Are there buried disadvantages?

It seems like systems gaming might have given humans an evolutionary advantage, if expanding our size, scope, and influence as a species is advantageous. Isn’t controlling animals and plants to cultivate food some form of gaming the system? I often wonder if we would not have been better off staying in the nomadic hunter/gatherer phase, so I am not going to concede that agriculture and livestocking were meritorious developments, but systems gaming seems ethically dubious, so that fits.

One question that arises is: is it unfair to game a system? If you have the intelligence, the courage, and the means, why should it be unfair? Is fairness even a justification for not doing it? I think you might be able to break down most components of economic systems into gaming ventures. For instance, slavery was one way to game the system, and we can all agree that slavery is unfair, because it takes advantage of another. But bribing an employee to do the work is not? Sure, it is less unfair, but does it not take advantage in some way?

And if gaming the system is unfair, are fairness and honor even valid independent ethical measures that should guide behavior? They seem to be, but why? I am not sure we have shared consensus on that.

One thing that allows systems gaming to happen is that those who engage are not held to account. Why do we not hold the gamers to account? For one thing, we might not even know who all are pulling the strings, or what exactly is happening that is impacting ourselves or others unfairly. If we do know, and we try to hold the gamers to account, there might be personal risk to us. We might want to reserve the moral justification to do a little gaming of our own. We might think it’s not our place or our responsibility.

I personally would like to see a little more of enticing the evil genius to come over from the dark side to help the greater good. Like using hackers to create secure systems. How do we make it worth their while? But wait, isn’t that a form of systems gaming, to incentivize gamers to contribute to the greater good? If it helps most people, is it bad? It doesn’t seem like it. So it’s not really the act of gaming the system that is bad in itself, is it?

Opportunity to game a complex system for substantial personal profit does not seem to be available to all. But it also does not seem to be randomly gained or stolen. It tends to require skill, intelligence, and knowledge. We want to think that we all have agreed to not do it, or to do it only for the greater good, but there is ample evidence to the contrary.

If you want to encourage a behavior, put it in one’s interest. As complicated and innovative as it might be to do that, there must be a way to encourage systems gaming exclusively for the greater good. The overlapping and intersecting of systems would seem to require a fluid and malleable strategy. Promoting a desired behavior often receives less emphasis than punishing or deterring undesired behavior. This seems like a rather tragic flaw.

I enjoy running. I enjoy the physical, mental, and emotional benefits I gain from running. If I could somehow simulate those effects with less effort, or if weather prevented me from running, would I do that? It would be tempting. For now, I will resist any attempt to game a system out of respect to my personal integrity, in part because I will feel better about myself. That form of personal happiness has more value to me than ill-gotten gains. I put it in my own interest. The long road is more scenic.