Patents have been a thing in the US since 1790 (even earlier, technically, as they are specifically called out in the constitution). What period of unencumbered free markets are you referring to?
Who's that? Last I checked the US has a sizeable homeless population, a vast amount of people in precarious working conditions and most Americans would be financially ruined by a single major accident or health issue. I don't think people "just a few generations ago" would consider them to have unimaginable wealth unless you want to focus on the reduced costs of consumer goods rather than access to food, shelter and social spaces.
Also patents already existed "a few generations ago". If you want to cut down on IP protections be my guest but framing that in the same language as cutting back on labor protections or social welfare seems a bit questionable. Especially if you're implying we had unencumbered free markets before and no longer do now but our supposed present wealth is owed to those free markets of the distant past not the "encumbrance" of the more recent past - sorry, you'll have to give a bit more of a timeline and explanation of cause and effect than just a snappy one-liner.
The great majority of people living today. We currently have the historically lowest percentage of people living in poverty ever. Check out the statistics. Of course it’s not 100% but it’s never been better.
Sure, depending on how you define poverty, how you measure it and how you interpret the numbers. For the record, the poverty line defined by most of the statistics you're likely thinking of is below starvation levels, even in many underdeveloped countries.
Show me statistics that don't make the basic mistake of considering moneyless hunter-gatherer societies equivalent to homeless people without money and we can maybe begin to have a conversation about the development of poverty and wealth over the ages.
In the meantime you're dodging the bulk of my question. When did things improve as drastically as you claim and what changed in terms of patent law that makes you think this improvement is being reversed or how do you see any suggestion of a causative link between market regulations and this decline? Also, how does your argument that we live in the best of times fit into this argument?
If we live in the historically best of times in terms of wealth and poverty but the current regulations and IP laws are making all of us worse off, that suggests you can point at some points where these laws and regulations were introduced or tightened followed by a decline in metrics you consider significant. I'd like you to spell out what you think these are (patents only seem to be part of it and even that is unclear as patents aren't new) and explain which metrics you think they had an impact on and what the scale of that impact was.