Explanation for E

Is the key here, "many," which the LSAT translates as some?

Hi @Julie-V and @bb427, Thanks for the question, and good intuition catching the word "many." Let's walk through the argument quickly. We know that most (at least half) people think that big businesses and small businesses both provide consumers with fairly priced goods and services. But most (at least half) people also think that small business is good, and big business usually is not. That means there are "many" (at least one) people (since there's at least some overlap between the two groups, since they're both over half), who think that big businesses provide consumers with fairly priced goods and services, but aren't socially responsible unless they're in times of prosperity. That means that there's some other requirement that those people have for a big business to be socially responsible, which is what (E) tells us. Hope this helps!

Why does the explanation for this answer choice discuss times of "hardship" when the stimulus only tells us about times of prosperity?

We could treat those as mutually exclusive. If we are in a time of hardship then we are not in a time of prosperity.