Short selling is fine, has been around for hundreds of years (since 1609 iirc) and with the exception of naked shorts, does good things for the financial system in general. It’s too damn bad if someone decides to short the stock of the firm you work for. You have to be on top of that and fight back. If you’re too weak, too bad. Someone else will make better use of your productive assets.
Many markets do not allow short selling and their existence is not 400 years old either. It performs no positive function and depresses the appeal of stocks being in essence an attack on capital formation. New companies are particularly vulnerable to this insidious practice. No investor in his right mind will “lend” his stock to be sold by another. It is a lie that that is what happens.
Short sellers profit from it but the economy as a whole suffers because it raises the level of risk in the system which reduces the willingness to invest in new companies particularly. Short selling is as productive as theft and is an attack on stock owners.
By artificially raising the supply of stock for sale it lowers the price for all its owners. Anyone wishing to bet against a stock should be allowed to do so through the option market (where there is no artificial increase in the supply of stock for sale) but short selling should be illegal as it is elsewhere. There should be no way of affecting negatively a stock price through such means.