No one follows the majority financially.
There is a problem: why in souls they follow the majority, but in wealth they do not follow the majority.
Maybe the rabbi can explain to me what the excuse is.
I especially find it difficult to accept the excuse that people claim that money is a commodity.
But it's hard for me to believe that even in the souls of man, one is held in one's soul.
Thank you very much.
This is a complex issue and I cannot cover it here. In Shaari Yashar, chapters 3-4 deal with it in great detail. I will briefly address a few points.
First, I completely agree that possession is irrelevant. On the contrary, in the world of common law, it is accepted that in tort law the evidentiary threshold should be lower, since 51% is enough to tip the scales in favor of one of the parties (if we ignore possession). The explanation is simple: if we do not do this, it will turn out that the one who wins is the one who has 49% in his favor, which is even less likely. On the other hand, in criminal law (punishment, such as the death penalty), evidence beyond a reasonable doubt is required, because there is no other party standing against the accused who will win the case, as is the case in torts.
But the very assumptions that go with the majority in souls and that do not go with wealth are not simple at all. Both.
Rabbi Shkop shows that there are contexts in the laws of life that do not follow the majority. For example, it is clear that the majority does not suffice for a guilty verdict, since two witnesses are required.
And regarding mammon, simply put, Toss disagreed on this in Sanhedrin 3 and in B.K. 27. Both deal with the contradiction between the two issues (since the B.D. follows the majority in mammon). Some Rishonim explained that the B.D. is the exceptional case, and in truth, they do not usually follow the majority in mammon. And there are Rishonim who explained that the case of a majority for Ridiya is the exception and that people usually follow the majority financially. I personally tend to the second method, and the explanation for the uniqueness of a majority for Ridiya is given by Rabbi Shkop (he bases it on the Ramban regarding tolerance). His argument is that if a person makes a claim about the way he chooses to act, it should not be rejected by virtue of the majority, since it is his right to say that he chose to belong to the minority. For example, even if most people in my city eat terifot, I can claim that I ate kosher because that is what I chose. What is my choice and is not a natural process is not determined by the majority. The same is true for a person who claims that he sold his ox for slaughter and not for Ridiya, even though most of the oxen in the market are sold for Ridiya.
Regarding the majority of Radya, I thought I would add that while most sales of oxen are for plowing, there is no such majority for people who claim to have sold their oxen for slaughter. In other words, if we were to conduct a survey among the people who claim to have sold their oxen for slaughter and we were to examine how many of them actually sold their oxen for slaughter and how many for plowing, then there would be room to generalize this survey to the case of the Gemara in which the man claims to have sold his oxen for slaughter. In other words, the man's very claim excludes him from the normal majority in the market.
That's right. That's exactly the claim.
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