In Reply to: The Torah and Slave Ownership - Part IV, V and VI posted by Student on October 12, 2006 at 15:19:46:
Intent of the law is one thing, and unintended consequences of legal assumptions are another.
"Second, as mentioned before, a slave is a valuable investment. The owner has to pay the purchase price, of course. But his expense doesn't end there. The owner is legally responsible for all expenses related to the slave's physical health and well being, including all medical costs. Plus, if the slave becomes injured, then he can't work and the owner has to absorb the lost productivity on top of his other losses. Therefore, there's a strong assumption that the owner behaves with an intention to protect his valuable investment."
Let's say I bought my slave for $1,000. Then my slave breaks a leg, and I have to come up with $2,000 to set that leg and absorb lost income while he's non-productive and laid up healing. Even then, I have no guarantee that the slave will be whole and healthy enough to be productive when his broken leg is healed.
As a business investment, wouldn't it make more sense to let the slave die of his injuries and invest the additional $1K I would have spent on fixing up a cripple in purchasing a young, fresh, healthy slave without a chronic health condition? I may have a legal obligation (according to Torah) to take care of my property, but in reality, who's going to report me for letting my slave die because I've decided to provide inadequate medical care? Other slaves? My business partner? The ethics police?
It seems that the legal intent of the Torah's slave law rests on the faulty assumption that I'll protect my investment in a humane and ethical manner. I can also protect my business investment by cutting my losses and letting my injured slave die. The second option is actually more rational from the standpoint of purely economic motivations than the first option, which assumes I'll do the right thing for humane reasons.
The law in this case is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that the motivation to take care of one's valuable property will translate into ethical, humane behavior toward a slave.