62 Business The Economist February 26th 2022
Sea’s troubles in India could spell simi-
lar problems for South-East Asia’s other su-
per-apps as they try to expand beyond their
region. Grab (which in November merged
with a special-purpose acquisition compa-
ny in a $40bn deal that was the largest ever
of its kind) and GoTo (the result of a merger
between two Indonesian online groups
that is likewise eyeing a listing) have also
received Chinese investments. Both are fo-
cusing primarily on business closer to
home for the time being. But as those mar-
kets become saturated, India’s 1.4bn con-
sumers would be the obvious next target—not least with China sequestered behind
the Great Firewall and the West largely spo-
ken for by America’s technology giants.
Despite the recent battering, Sea’s share
price is still around three times what it was
before the pandemic, outperforming many
other technology bets. The Singaporean
star remains South-East Asia’s most valu-
able listed company. Unlike many young-
ish tech darlings, parts of Sea make money.
In the third quarter of 2021 its digital-en-
tertainment arm raked in around $715m in
adjusted gross operating profits.
That cash, combined with ready accessto capital afforded by its size and promi-
nence, allows Sea to cross-subsidise loss-
making divisions such as Shopee (which
lost $684m in that period on the same mea-
sure) or SeaMoney, a fast-growing finan-
cial-services unit consolidated in 2019. As
the stock suffered in the wake of the Indian
“Free Fire” ban, arkNext Generation Inter-
net exchange-traded fund, a vehicle run by
Cathie Wood, a high-profile tech stock-
picker, loaded up on Sea shares. Still, in-
vestors will need Ms Wood’s famously
strong stomach to weather the increas-
ingly choppy waters Sea finds itself in.T
he term“dirty work” was coined by
Everett Hughes, an American sociol-
ogist, to capture the attitudes of ordinary
Germans to the atrocities of the Nazi
regime. Hughes used it to convey the
idea of something immoral but conve-
niently distant, activities that were tac-
itly endorsed by the public but that could
also be disavowed by them. The term has
since come to embrace a wide array of
jobs, in particular those that are essential
but stigmatised, both crucial to society
and kept at arm’s length from it.
In an insightful new book of the same
name, Eyal Press, a journalist, reports
unflinchingly on occupations in America
that carry the taint of stigma. Among
others, he interviews prison guards in
Florida and slaughterhouse workers in
Texas. The pandemic has changed peo-
ple’s awareness of some essential work:
meat-processing plants were designated
as critical infrastructure by the Trump
administration in 2020, for example. But
these jobs remain largely hidden from
view; many are in physically isolated
locations. People do not know what these
workplaces are like and do not care to.
Dirty jobs often pay better than other
openings. But they impose unseen costs.
They usually involve inflicting harm on
others (or on the environment), and they
ask emotionally and morally compro-
mising questions of the people who
perform them. What is it like to work day
in and day out as a “knocker” or a “live
hanger” on a slaughterhouse kill floor?
Should a prison guard risk her livelihood
to speak up about the violence routinely
meted out to inmates by her colleagues?
Mr Press does not exculpate individuals
who behave badly in these jobs. But by
forcing readers to confront the context in
which they operate, he makes it harder to
condemn them as bad apples.The boundaries of dirty work can be
drawn too loosely. Some sociologists
include firefighting, on the ground that it
exposes people to danger on behalf of
others, yet it is difficult to think of jobs
that are less morally compromised. In-
deed, exposure to danger can be the thing
that cleanses work. Mr Press also meets
operators of military drones at an air-force
base in Nevada. Although drone warfare is
a more precise form of combat than many
others, operators often struggle with the
idea of taking life without taking risk. The
personal danger that soldiers on the
ground face is what separates an unfair
video-game from an exercise in valour.
The definition of dirty work can also be
too rigid. Although the dirtiest work often
lies at a remove and is concentrated
among the low-paid, white-collar organi-
sations have their own types of grubby
jobs. Think of the difference between
engineers who build social-media plat-
forms in the name of connectedness and
the content moderators who monitor the
effluvia that result. The very language of
decarbonisation points to emerging frac-tures within energy-firm workforces,
between employees developing the clean
energies of the future and those pump-
ing the dirty fossil fuels of the past.
Individual roles can also break into
dirtier and cleaner tasks. A piece of re-
search in 2012 found that animal-shelter
workers who were involved in putting
animals to sleep were less likely to talk to
outsiders about their work. “All The
News That’s Fit To Click”, a new book by
Caitlin Petre, a professor of journalism at
Rutgers University, examines the effect
that performance metrics are having on
newsrooms. As she interviewed people
for the book, Ms Petre noticed the fre-
quency with which journalists used
metaphors of pollution and contamina-
tion to describe the risk that chasing
eyeballs might compromise the integrity
of their editorial judgments.
Journalists tend to be good at telling
stories, however. Ms Petre describes how
many of them have drawn symbolic
mental boundaries as a way of mitigating
this risk. Analysing audience data to
work out how to present their work is a
“clean” use of metrics; using data to
make decisions on content is impure and
to be avoided. Criminal lawyers use a
different but deep-rooted narrative to
make sense of their own unpleasant
tasks. They often defend people who
have committed appalling crimes, for
example, but because they do so in ser-
vice of a noble ideal—everyone’s right to
a fair trial—they are far less likely to feel
morally compromised.
The idea of dirty work should not
obscure the fact that having a job is a
source of dignity. But some roles exact a
hidden toll. To draw the sting of stigma,
employers have to persuade their work-
ers and the public that such jobs are not
just essential, but also worthy of respect.Work confers dignity. But some jobs are also a source of stigmaBartlebyDirty work