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A powerful exposé of how finance turns our basic human needs into assets.
We have entered a new era of turbo-charged financial extraction. Having amassed huge reserves, global finance capital is seeking out fresh areas for profitable investments. Nothing and no one is safe.
In Privatising humanity, Kate Bayliss shows how investment banks and hedge funds target our essential services, while simultaneously extending their reach into lower-income countries. When it comes to investments in these sectors, shareholder profits are funded by us, the end-users and tax-payers who simply wish to meet our basic human needs for water, warmth and shelter. We have no alternative but to pay into these structures that generate massive returns for the rich.
Unpacking the details of these processes in three sectors in the UK – water, energy and housing – Bayliss exposes the devastating consequences of this model, which is driving inequality to levels not seen in a century.
‘Kate Bayliss is the Sherlock Holmes of untangling the links between the impoverishment of UK citizens and the profits of the multinationals who benefit from high costs and low investment. This book should be a wake-up call to everyone, from journalists to politicians, and especially to the UK citizens whose most basic human needs have been used as business opportunities.’
Julia Steinberger, Professor of Societal Challenges of Climate Change, University of Lausanne
‘This jargon-free book explains that the privatisation of water, energy and housing provision in the UK has generated many billions of pounds for the global elite, all at the expense of UK households’ health and wellbeing. The book is Kate Bayliss’s tour de force. Essential reading.’
Andrew Brown, Professor of Economics and Political Economy, University of Leeds
1 How humanity became an investment opportunity
2 Private equity and the financialisation of human needs
3 Chronicles of crises in the privatised water supply
4 Why did water regulation fail so badly – and who foots the bill?
5 The curious workings of the retail and wholesale energy ‘markets’
6 Inequality in the energy sector: riches for some and cold homes for others
7 Housing inequalities as investment opportunities
8 Conclusion: what lessons are to be learned and where do we go from here?
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