The alternative to capitalists picking who gets funded doesn't have to be central planning. You could have a consumer driven model where citizens get to allocate money to new research and development, similar to the democracy dollar idea that Andrew Yang was pushing. This would allow money to trickle up to the best companies instead of "trickling down" and getting captured by the rich.

If each American got to distribute 5 thousand a year to businesses, researchers or infrastructure the world would be a much better place. I'm sure none of them would allocate it to advertisers or tools that spy on them.