Are they though? We're quite good (and dare I say it: 'efficient') at feeding, housing and transporting huge populations. Almost all the inefficiencies you mentioned are preference and/or comfort based. Society is not separated from laws of physics and economics. Everything is balanced against the cost of those services - when/if costs go up, you do tend to see corresponding change, typically in efficiency increase (e.g. smaller more efficient cars as gas prices go up).
>endless streams of 2000kg+ hunk of steel, plastic and glass, 95% of them transport about 80kg of human, 95% of the time they're just parked taking space for no reason.
That's true ... kind of ... there is a cost for car ownership and use that is different in different regions. If you're in New York, you're probably not driving to work.
The human part of car ownership is freedom. It's not ultra efficient to own a car, but there is something about it that is liberating for many people of all economic statuses. Most likely, in the future, car ownership will go away for the vast majority of people, and it will be sad when it does.
