Privatising humanity

Kate Bayliss is a Research Associate at SOAS University of London. She has worked extensively on privatisation, financialisation and social equity in the UK and the global South.

‘As the things we need to live have been repurposed as vehicles for profit, shareholders have grown wealthy while those unable to pay have been forced to go without the basics. This is a sharp, empirically grounded account of how financial power reshapes everyday life and why reclaiming essential services is one of the most important challenges of our age.’Grace Blakeley, author of Vulture Capitalism‘A forensic account of how private finance works and its impact on everyday lives by one of the top experts in the field.’Gill Plimmer, Infrastructure Correspondent, Financial Times‘Today’s privatised economy raises vitally important but complex issues of public policy. Kate Bayliss analyses them in a sophisticated, deeply informed and highly readable way. Her remarkable book is indispensable reading for anyone debating how society and the economy in the UK can recover from the destruction wrought by austerity and privatisation. The lessons learned are also of major relevance in many other countries.’Philip G. Alston, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law, New York University‘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 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 book provides insights into a shifting landscape where corporations now control almost everything. As a key sponsor of capitalism, the state is struggling to reconcile corporate power with citizens’ demands for democracy and accountability. Privatising humanity offers a theoretical and empirical analysis of the tensions and challenges in prioritising good life over corporate power. It is a must read for your favourite student, teacher, regulator and policy analyst.’Prem Sikka, Baron Sikka‘The basics of a human life and a dignified society – and for a small class of global investors, the opportunity of a lifetime. In Privatising humanity, Kate Bayliss lays bare the machine behind your bills: a system engineered to extract maximum returns from needs you cannot refuse. The result is a brilliant guide to a world of soaring profits for investors and broken services for everyone else.’Mathew Lawrence, author of Owning the Future‘Privatising humanity provides an ambitious examination of how private finance has remade essential everyday services – water, energy and housing – with disastrous consequences for users and society more widely. In bringing together these stories, the book provides an invaluable resource for making sense of the deep mess we are in.’Julie Froud, co-author of Murky Water: Challenging an Unsustainable System‘This book is a necessary and very timely unpicking of the privatisation scandal and the mindset behind it. If you're wondering why your bills are so high, this explains it. If you've watched Dirty Business, read this next. A passionate defence of ordinary households and the public good.’Cat Hobbs, founder and director of We Own It‘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 opportunity2 Private equity and the financialisation of human needs3 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 others7 Housing inequalities as investment opportunities8 Conclusion: what lessons are to be learned and where do we go from here?Index