Leave all that stuff to people smarter than me (us). They will buy the right stocks and sell the bad stocks. Which will result in the "good" stocks going up in price and the "bad" stocks not

This is true.* But one must also remember the large (presumably much larger) population of people who buy stocks for really stupid reasons, leading THEIR picks to go up too : )
At least for a while.

I would advocate a modest tax credit for dedicated short sellers of individual securities, as very few of them do so for stupid reasons, so both their sales and purchases tend to drive stock prices towards fair value. They perform a public service, and positive externalities are always under supplied.

Jim

* especially lately.
Imagine a fellow who in the four years 2022-2025 simply bought equal amounts of the 30 stocks (I used the Value Line 1700 database) that had gone up in price the most in the prior year, held them all for 1-6 months, and repeated. That would have returned over 40%/year. My suggestion: don't try this for the next four years.