I think it's both logically pretty clear, and empirically "proven" by comparing countries like the US with e.g. Russia. I write "proven" in scare quotes because

I think it's both logically pretty clear, and empirically "proven" by comparing countries like the US with e.g. Russia. I write "proven" in scare quotes because it's hard/impossible to really empirically prove these kinds of claims without true experiments, which you can't really do, just look at the imperfect experiments of history and infer. Either way, there is a sneaking assumption hiding inside the "we advance civilization" quote that can't be proven no matter what, and that is what does it mean to be a more advanced civilization? This is not something that can be proven because it depends on your value system. I am compltely in the camp that this is true and that civilization today is better (e.g. less people dying, more material wealth, more stuff we'd like to do being available, more art, etc). But you can also disagree with that and thus disagree that efficiency is so great.