Just heard the phrase on a clip on my X website on the Peston show from tonight in the UK where Martin Lewis talks about ‘people living within their own fiscal eco-chambers’.

To me this really struck a chord and is so insightful to so many political expressions, opinions and perspectives. An echo chamber is “an environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own.” The term is a metaphor based on an acoustic echo chamber, in which sounds reverberate in a hollow enclosure.

I often wonder why both in the UK and US why elections often appear to be so close and nobody really knows who is going to win or lose or even or by how much of a percentage and also why people seem to express certain strong held views or appear to disbelieve or not have an interest in or care about the views of others that can be considered to be an opposite to their own.

Well I still don’t understand why one would ever vote for Trump and over the next four years were going to see that political reality unfold. But as a businessman and salesman that made a pitch to multiple pockets of people with a wide spectrum of opinions and he was able to rally enough people in enough fiscal eco chambers to ultimately be able to now dominate the political landscape for the next four years in the US and beyond too.

Sadly in the UK the right have dominated our politics in terms of proportion of governments voted in over the years and an eco chamber of people that look inwards to what is in it for themselves when their lives are profitable or are sold a story or business model that looks inwards to making them wealthier and more prosperous, you can see the logic in why a majority would vote for this consistently on an election by election basis and then once elected our government and politicians fights for this ethos for our nations and fight to tell us that this is what they are doing for us and thus the cycle of inward looking self-serving politics continues.

Trumps political perspective might be an extreme perspective of such self serving interests and needs to be fulfilled and voted for but it is neither new nor in many ways an unexpected thing to vote for when given a choice to do so.

The main problem for me, which I mention from my warm, hobbit hole in the shire of Devon in what is after all considered to be a relatively affluent part of the planet and well looked after space and place is that the world aspires to be. A self serving place like many that looks after its own interest and needs but not everywhere in the world is relatively affluent part of the planet or a well looked after space and place on the planet. There are conflicting interest, desires and opinions and not everyone can have or should get their own way. There are not enough trees to be cut down, not enough rivers and seas to be polluted and robbed of life, not enough land to be bought and sold or mines to be dug out or shares to be bought and sold for everyone.

There are many in the wealthy areas of the world whose eco chamber of reality and political perspective often encourages them to ignore or turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, alien to themselves, to ignore and pretend that it does not matter to them because of who they are or what they have and where they live.

Foreign places to many that are experiencing great poverty or suffering in developing or underdeveloped or third world nations, due to lack of fiscal opportunities and jobs or due to wars (not caused by them) or climate change (not generated by them) or pollution (not produced by them), or political stagnation and corruption (also not their fault) are often seen as not our problems too.

Such people living under such circumstances will seek to possibly escape to a wealthy region of the world, safer from all of the above mentioned negatives, these people will be known as immigrants, both legal and illegal ones. Or if fortunate in the country they live in they might seek to work as best they can to provide their future generations with great chance of wealth and opportunities that they could never have had in their own lifetime, but this opportunity will not be there for all.