The Dueling Loops is short for The Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace simulation model. This model forms the core of Thwink.org's analysis of the sustainability problem. The basic model is shown below. It's called the Dueling Loops because the two main loops are locked in a duel over the same pool of Uncommitted Supporters. Whoever convinces the most Uncommitted Supporters to support them wins.
Why this is important
The Dueling Loops model is a fundamental structure that appears to lie at the very heart of why political systems resist change that would benefit the common good. It explains critically important behaviors like why there's so much change resistance to solving problems like sustainability and why political corruption is so endemic.
Once you understand the Dueling Loops your view of the sustainability problem will change radically. Its root causes will be obvious. That opens the door to solutions that will work because they resolve root causes instead of intermediate causes.
How the model works
Over time, political system evolution has whittled the top two strategies for gaining supporters into just two basic strategies. In the Race to the Top, politicians compete for supporters on the basis of the truth about what they can do to optimize the common good of all, which is the goal of democracy.
In the Race to the Bottom, politicians compete to see who can help special interests the most. Since this reduces the good of the majority, it will not produce a winning majority unless deception and favoritism is used to get people to vote against their own best interests. (Of the two, deception is used far more because it's cheaper.) For example, a degenerate politician will promise a special interest group something but once in office will do a lot less than promised. Or a degenerate politician will create a false enemy and rally his supporters against it, such as the fallacy that big government is bad, immigrants are stealing your jobs, or gays are taking over.
The key insight in the Dueling Loops model is that the Race to the Bottom has an inherent advantage over the Race to the Top, because people's ability to detect political deception is less than perfect. In fact, it's abysmally low. So low, that the right deception (false memes on the model) works like a charm most of the time. Thus when degenerate and rational politicians compete (duel) for the same pool of Uncommitted Supporters, the Race to the Bottom wins most of the time.
The ramifications of this are profound. The most powerful special interest group in most industrialized countries is the New Dominant Life Form, better known as large for-profit corporations. Their top goal is to maximize short term profits. Solving the sustainability problem conflicts with that goal, so Corporatis profitis is dead set against solving the problem. By exploiting the inherent advantage of The Race to the Bottom the corporate life form has been able to stall, water down, roll back, and in general successfully oppose all major attempts to solve the sustainability problem.
Isn't that what you would do if you were not a person, but instead were a member of the army of the New Dominant Life Form?