You can’t have a market without buyers and sellers. The only way to get tesla shares is by buying them from another person. It doesn’t matter whether the seller

You can’t have a market without buyers and sellers. The only way to get tesla shares is by buying them from another person. It doesn’t matter whether the seller has 100 shares left after selling to you, or -100. The financial transaction is the same. One person believes the shares will go up and buys. The other believes the opposite and sells. It’s not “un-American”. If anything, the superstition that that short selling harms companies or the economy is “un-American”. It’s good when badly operated businesses go bankrupt. The employees can then work somewhere else where they can make a better contribution to society. Keeping zombie companies alive is bad. (And Tesla made over a million cars last year; bankwuptcy is not happening anytime soon.)