The short side is over the long term a terrible place to be,...

The short side is over the long term a terrible place to be, Graham would advocate a portfolio of stocks and bonds with the proportion dependant upon relative yields.
What to do in a world of ZIRP absurdity?
I am very interested in this chapter of Bagehot it's significance clearly hasn't been recognized.
It doesn't help that most people think of the problem as what the government should do.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Lombard_Street:_A_Description_of_the_Money_Market/Chapter_6
We are in a 'periodical season of delicacy' where strength in the economy is actually a sign of weakness. Where government debts clearly can't be repaid.
For corn read oil which remains well below the cost to produce and goes into everything.
"And a great and protracted rise in the price of corn will at once destroy all the real part of the unusual prosperity of previous good times. It will change the full working of the industrial machine into an imperfect working; it will make the produce of that machine less than usual instead of more than usual; instead of there being more than the average of general dividend to be distributed between the producers, there will immediately be less than the average.

And in so far as the apparent prosperity is caused by an unusual plentifulness of loanable capital and a consequent rise in prices, that prosperity is not only liable to reaction, but certain to be exposed to reaction. The same causes which generate this prosperity will, after they have been acting a little longer, generate an equivalent adversity."

Here's the one that's relevant to why shorting now is I believe especially useful.

"The good times too of high prices almost always engender much fraud. All people are most credulous when they are most happy; and when much money has just been made, when some people are really making it, when most people think they are making it, there is a happy opportunity for ingenious mendacity. Almost everything will be believed for a little while, and long before discovery the worst and most adroit deceivers are geographically or legally beyond the reach of punishment. But the harm they have done diffuses harm, for it weakens credit still further."
OK quoting from a 19th Century text as the ideas are good now consider today.
Bitcoin, Tesla, etc etc etc.
It's just a great time to be short and a very scary time to be long. The reason I think that the short side has opportunities is that most of the effort is focused on the long and most people (whether you admit it or not) are influenced by ideas which are popular or influential rather than ideas which are correct.
As Chomsky says an irrational respect for unaccountable authority. That's what I always argue with d r w ho about, he thinks whatever the directors say is true and one should worship their feet where I assume they are absolutely crooked and unethical.
I and am frequently surprised by how naievely optimistic I am when facts prove them to be far more nasty than I could imagine.
Hence why I never listened to Buffett, or called myself a 'centrist' because most everyone believes those ideas and most everyone is wrong.
That's why I like Cohodes because he speaks truth to power at personal risk to himself and he does the legwork by talking to whistleblowers etc.
He started out shorting pinball machines by going into arcades and counting the coin drops, now that's the way to invest. I think you could do this on the shortside and do pretty well at scary times likethe present.