1. Research and development occurs under communism, but at a different rate and of a different type.
2. The Soviet Union was too big and poor to please the people well at that time.
3. Yes I've enjoyed years of depressing, stigmatised unemployment thanks to capitalism, .
Some say many now live in a post scarcity economy due to the advances accumulated by the capitalist system, but that few real further advances are occurring now and so it's time to switch to a communist system in order to banish the spectre of unemployment (as well as other problems brought about by that system (eg. astronomical wealth inequality)). Hardly an absurd proposition.