I don’t have any patience for the stupid arguments that shorting...

I don’t have any patience for the stupid arguments that shorting is just another way to invest, or that it adds liquidity to the market. The bottom line is that ANY market is an exercise in supply and demand, and allowing a sale that is not immediately matched to a purchase increases the supply side of the equation, inevitably putting downward pressure on the share price.

Period.

If you want to gamble on the potential downward movement of a company’s share price, buy put options. At the end of the day, the put option (or call option) is tied to an actual transaction where one party is going to either buy or sell an underlying security, with a second party taking the other side of the transaction.