As an Industrial designer, I am appalled at land vehicles which weigh more than their payloads. Cars should weigh hundreds of pounds, not thousands. There are other ways to handle crash safety, so we are hauling around tons of steel just to establish our identities.
I recently learned that ocean going ships have propellers designed according to the Betz Limit. This was what somebody used to see if he wanted to enter a pulling contest against a paddle wheel ship, and is still useful for tugboats, but it leaves the engineers quite content with about 70% efficiency. If they would just use the Froude equations, pertaining to moving objects, they would have to make some noticeable changes, but they'd get 90%, saving gobs of fuel.
Almost everything in our energy supply system is appalling, being designed to maximize profit and addiction, while ignoring the cost of climate change. Likewise, our capitalist economy is designed to concentrate capital, and there is nothing except disaster to stop a slide into a single owner and general starvation. When I first owned a limited company, I couldn't believe all the opportunities it provided to dodge taxes, etc. Our laws are rigged for white-collar crime. Systems engineers could do far better than politicians to design a stable democracy, but we don't hire them.