No Risk, All Reward

This week, we look beyond the physical infrastructure supporting
our lives to the owners taking over that infrastructure: asset
managers. Brett Christophers, an author, professor, and economic
geographer at Uppsala University in Sweden, joins me to explore
the troubling transformation of infrastructure ownership in
today's economy. From housing to energy to water, massive asset
management firms like Blackstone and Brookfield have positioned
themselves more and more between citizens and essential services,
extracting wealth while taking minimal risk. Christophers
explains how this shift from public to private control has
reshaped our relationship with everyday infrastructure,
particularly as we attempt to transform our energy supplies. He
argues that the profit-driven approach of these financial giants
is at odds with the public good, creating a system where even as
things like renewable technology get cheaper, their deployment
slows due to insufficient returns for investors.