competition and capitalism work well to drive technological improvement in conditions of extreme scarcity such as existed 100+ years ago. of course, it does this pretty violently.
there's no reason to believe it is better than democratic, central planning (note: not stalinism) in either this or the last century. public planning would, of course, go out of its way to incentivize automation and further technological improvement... something that has historically been publicly funded anyway.
I can't, because American capitalism bombs every attempt to provide an example of an alternative out of existence, precisely to cause people to think there is no alternative in conversations like this.
I will say that despite massive sanctions and material scarcity, and an incomplete level of democracy, Cuba gets a lot of things more right than the US (for instance, healthcare for non-rich people). They are also fucking up their environment way less. But it's still scarcity socialism and could be way better.
the US also has a very incomplete level of democracy
there's no reason to believe it is better than democratic, central planning (note: not stalinism) in either this or the last century. public planning would, of course, go out of its way to incentivize automation and further technological improvement... something that has historically been publicly funded anyway.
edit: typos and stuff