One of the criticisms of the market economy is that human rights can be compromised or even eliminated in order to protect market interests. This criticism notes that free movement of labor is limited from Third World nations to developed nations by those seeking to protect their market interests. Labor costs are lower in the Third World--where work is often performed for companies based in the First world--and free migration of labor, which is itself one of the underlying principles of a market economy, is curtailed, sometimes by force, in order to protect the position of the much more powerful companies that employ the labor (Flere, 2001).
Human rights have also been categorized into classic political rights (free speech, universal right to vote) while social human rights, such as the right to health care or the right to work, are given less support in the political arena. Barriers to extending human rights have arisen in developed nations through requiring citizenship or residence requirements, while in less developed nations, human rights are extended only to those in political favor at the time. A market economy perpetuates this system, according to critics, because participants in the global economy must do business with repressive regimes in underdeveloped nations, and because developed nations seek to protect whatever gains they have achieved through residence and citizenship requirements (Flere, 2001).
Adam Smith in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which is generally considered the book that provided the framework for the market economy, explores the issue of power evolving from wealth. In this work, Smith hypothesizes an early state of society where land (the most basic form of capital) has not yet been appropriated for private ownership, and where the harvest of the land would therefore belong to those who performed the labor. Only when land is appropriated under private ownership a...