Usually your arguments make more sense than this.
You also didn't have to pay to purchase a laborer. Food that was feed to a slave had economic value. It could have been sold. Housing was not an expense the same way that it costs an airline nothing to fly you on a less than full airplane because they were going anyway. And as for the production value of a slave, maybe you can explain why slavery died off on its own in the North. If you could have a slave for free, and the slave wanted to be your slave, would you take him? I wouldn't. It's not because there are no chores around here that need doing, but it's a lot cheaper to hire people when I need them than to put them up and feed them in exchange for their work.
ML/NJ
As do yours. Sometimes.
You also didn't have to pay to purchase a laborer.
Nor could you sell him. A slave was an investment that could be liquidated and which appreciated in value for many years of their life. A laborer was an expense, nothing more.
Food that was feed to a slave had economic value. It could have been sold.
Without the slave it would not have been grown to begin with so your claim of opportunity cost makes no sense. The cost of the food was next to nothing. Grown on the plantation with slave labor it represented no real expense to the plantation owner.
Housing was not an expense the same way that it costs an airline nothing to fly you on a less than full airplane because they were going anyway.
Housing was not a continuing expense. Throw up a cabin, with slave labor, and it could be used for generations of slaves with little maintenance.
And as for the production value of a slave, maybe you can explain why slavery died off on its own in the North.
The North did not have the labor-intensive plantations that the South had, and more importantly society turned against it.
If you could have a slave for free, and the slave wanted to be your slave, would you take him? I wouldn't.
You're not a member of mid-19th century Southern society.
It's not because there are no chores around here that need doing, but it's a lot cheaper to hire people when I need them than to put them up and feed them in exchange for their work.
And if there aren't people around to hire? Or if your neighbor down the road offers a dollar or two more than you? And what if the person you want to hire is a real boob or a thief? Slaves was an investment. A cheap source of labor. And a reliable source that would be there when you needed them.