Impractical Laws?

Yesterday, I read more of Moshe Weinfeld's Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East. It referred to parallels between Israel and other nations in the ancient Near East, as well as Greece. In the Torah, God commands Israel to forgive the debts of Israelites every seven years (Deuteronomy 15). There's also a year of Jubilee, which occurs every fifty years. At that time, sold land reverts back to its original owner (Leviticus 25). According to Weinfeld, other nations had the cancellation of debt and the return of land to its original owner.

I've heard more than one academic assert that the Torah's laws on the forgiveness of debt and the Jubilee were not put into practice, since they were, well, impractical. Rabbi Hillel in the first century actually came up with a way to circumvent these laws, seeing credit as a necessary part of society. But I wonder how skeptics would address the existence of such laws in the ancient Near East and Greece? Would they say that the forgiveness of debts didn't occur as often in those places, so its occurrence wasn't as problematic as a seventh year release would be? I know that Michael Fishbane refers to scholarship that says that many ancient Near Eastern law codes weren't intended to be applied to real life, but I'm not sure if such can be said about (say) the reforms by Solon in ancient Greece.

That said, the Sabbatical year and the year of Jubilee were supposed to be times of celebration in ancient Israel---when people got a fresh start. Today is also a day of celebration: Thanksgiving.