Shorting does tend to promote misanthropic traits at an individual level, but it's prosocial overall: short-sellers act as a check, because charismatic revolutionaries and charismatic con artists can both appeal to the same people. For perennial optimists, VCs do seem to have good BS detectors—the biggest private company scandals, WeWork and Theranos, both raised most of their money from non-VC sources. (When people have tried to create ways to short private companies, those were the two that most funds wanted to short.)
Shorting does tend to promote misanthropic traits at an individual level, but it's prosocial overall: short-sellers act as a check, because charismatic revolutionaries and charismatic con artists can both appeal to the same people. For perennial optimists, VCs do seem to have good BS detectors—the biggest private company scandals, WeWork and Theranos, both raised most of their money from non-VC sources. (When people have tried to create ways to short private companies, those were the two that most funds wanted to short.)