[hnbad]

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.