There is no such thing as capitalism. “The first countries to get rid of recurrent famine” were those that began using the steam engine and field enclosure. These are not “capitalism”, they are “capital”, in tge jargon of the economist Marx, or, in modern parlance, technology. All of the parts of the world that are not starving are not starving due to their adoption of a variety of technologies, both mechanical and bureaucratic: fertilizer, machine tractors, and centralized governance using telephone lines and now internet. When people claim “capitalism” ended starvation, they ignore places like China and Russia which also ended famine despite adopting state ownership of farms. There was indeed famine during the transition period, but Russia ended famine by the 50s and China ended famine by the 70s, long before many “capitalist” countries in the 3rd world. That’s because the world isn’t about the phony field of “economics,” it’s about technology. Likewise, the other advancements of society that are claimed to be associated with “capitalism”—the end of smallpox and other old high-casualty diseases, the development of reliable air and trans-oceanic transport, instant global communications: all are due to the efforts of scientists working in labs mostly funded by governments and wealthy patrons, not “capitalism.” Capitalist enterprises almost never take major innovative risks. Even the latest glorious advancement that will doubtless be claimed by “capitalism,” Wikipedia-scraping chat bots, was developed by a non-profit.
Everything is about technology—stop letting economists drag you into stupid, poorly formed debates using undefined terms like “capitalism.”
Technology is a large factor but not the core driver. It's individual human motivation that drives the efficiency of the system. When you centralize the function of human motivation into a governing body like socialism aims to do, the goal is that the central body can optimize the system. However, the system is too complex and always misses something that was never predicted. When you "outsource" those motive drivers back to the people with capitalism you let the system optimize itself.
Capitalism was a huge invention that for the first time in history made people invest in capital. Previously, virtually all capital was the land. When someone had extra resources, they spend them either in buying more land (thus not creating new lands, but simply land changing owner) or buying non productive things like nobility titles, weapons, big palaces... The investment in "capital" was not usual, maybe from time to time someone bought an oxen, or a new plow, but it was not the norm.
The raise of capitalism, that indeed is such thing meant the raise of systematic investment in capital. The idea of risk investing in a machine that might have a ROI was new, and the idea that the extra money earned with that investment could be used to invest even more was radically new.
Is rich to claim that "China and Russia also ended famine by 50s and 70s". Each of them had a massive and historical famines as late as 1932 and 1960, and the famine was directly caused by their economic system, proving central planning as a failure: it seem to work until the planners make some error. When that error happens sooner or later, the failure is catastrophical and generalized. In fact, China partially abandoned central planning to raise from poverty in the 70's you menction as the end of China famines, when Deng Xiaoping said that a socialist state could use the market economy without being capitalist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_market_economy). The new system means that China is politically socialist, but economically at least partially capitalist. For example, it meant that farms no longer were owned by the state. Politically they did some words juggling of "socialism", "market" and "capitalism", but in practice they just adopted capitalism as the main capital allocating force. Central planning was abandoned in the early 90s, and they adopted a western-like planning (fiscal and monetary policies, with some industrial policies).
You play dirty when comparing China and USSR with "many [unnamed] countries in the 3rd world". We are trying to discover the best way to build a society. You choose your best example, I choose mine, and lets compare. It's a low blow that you can choose your best example and pit it to my worst (and probably not even representative). It highlights that you are not after the truth. You just hate capitalism and need to manipulate reality to "win" internet arguments.
You are making some strawman argument here. You claim that capitalism doesn't innovate or take risks, something that nobody claims! Here goes an example: oil cracking was invented in Imperial Russia in 1891. But due to lack of capitalist institutions, it has no use for gasoline: it was a refinery dangerous waste. For 20 years they had an invention in a box that served no one. In 1913, the process was re-invented in the US and was immediately put to work towards humanity advance: gasoline was needed for cars. One invention calls for the other, all of them guided by profit seeking.
Capitalism doesn't claim to be the source of advances, inventions or discoveries. It claims to be the best known way to put those advances, regardless who made them, in use. It claims to be the best capital allocator in existence.
Everything is about technology—stop letting economists drag you into stupid, poorly formed debates using undefined terms like “capitalism.”