Let me make the argument for short selling, directly from the article: > "COVID-19 also revealed a dirty secret hidden in the crawlspace upon which many commer

Let me make the argument for short selling, directly from the article: > "COVID-19 also revealed a dirty secret hidden in the crawlspace upon which many commercial mortgage-backed securities were built. A University of Texas at Austin study published in August claimed that banks knowingly inflated underwriting income for $650 billion worth of commercial real estate mortgages issued between 2013 and 2019, including by 5 percent or more for nearly a third of the roughly 40,000 loans. “A well-documented historical pattern is that fraud thrives in boom periods and is revealed in busts,” the university researchers wrote, adding that end investors were unaware of this hidden risk, a deception akin to buying a Ferrari secretly outfitted with a rusted-out Kia engine. It could be argued that CMBS had been a magic trick all along, with big banks one step ahead, luring investors to pick a card from a rigged deck. It took a global pandemic—an act of God—to reveal this financial sleight of hand." Our (capitalistic) system is rife with fraud, and as the saying goes "fraud creates alpha", i.e. a competitive advantage. Now in a perfect market, the regulator would step in and prevent and punish the fraudsters. However, fraud has positive side effects such as creating employment opportunities (Wirecard employed 2000ee on avg. for 10 years, say), and regulators are underfunded and overwhelmed because less regulation is good for business. So the economic function of short selling is to help price discovery at the minimum and expose fraud at the maximum. Also short selling is a stupid and highly risky idea: You take unlimited (!) downside for a limited upside, and any short portfolio will ultimately go to zero due to markets going up on average.