Regardless, there is a pretty strong argument to make that shorting is actually healthy for the economy because it leads to creative destruction
e.g. for farmers, they can predict their harvest 5 months later, but can't know for sure.
They can short their own industry stocks. If the harvest goes good, they have crops to eat. If the harvest goes bad (e.g. forest fire), the short would net them some money.
Futures let farmer lock-in a sell price for the crops, but without any crops due to the fire, the sell price wouldn't matter
If nobody buys the shares after the IPO then there is no demand and the market cap drops to zero. There’s no reward for the people who took the initial risk on the company and then what’s the point?
Ever heard of corporate raiding? A healthy stock price prevents hostile takeovers. It creates a class of emitionally invested citizens in the case of other external threats. It lets the public subsidize bonuses to employees (stock options) and in the case of a merger gives the company an asset that isn’t cash that can make up part of the compensation.
So the response to the argument: investors support the company, short sellers support the investors.