Go Long, Karl Popper

Reading a biography of Karl Popper today I was struck by this quote:

"Popper regarded democracy as the only political system capable of institutionalizing knowledge and freedom, and since he regarded the latter as a condition for the former, it may be said - though he might not say it - that history had proved him right. The fallibility of the democracies had turned out to be a strength; the infallibility of dictators had revealed their weakness. Totalitarian systems created an illusion of frictionless cohesion and inflexible unanimity, but - by damning all dissent as treachery - such regimes lost any prospect of improvement or self-correction through constructive criticism."

Applying this concept to the stock market, I think this is the strongest argument in favor of allowing short selling I've ever heard.