One thing that constantly surprises me is how many people believe that maximizing shareholder value is some sort of legal or moral obligation, not an ideological convenience made up out of whole cloth by an economist in the 70s. What's elided in this article is that Jack Welch called it “the dumbest idea in the world.”
"While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so."
Most CS degrees have students do a "traffic light" exercise at some point: build an model of an intersection, run the stoplights.
Those lessons sometimes ask questions like "Are there pedestrians in your model? Maybe bikes? How about buses? Exactly who lives in the neighbourhood, do they relies on public transit? Et cetera.
A question I like to ask students, that always gets a lot of uncomfortable silence is: at what point do these decisions stop being software, and start being public policy?
@meejah The best thing I've seen in that vein are lights that turn red when they detect cars going over the limit. Really puts the pressure on traffic to stay nice and chilly, not get excitable, everyone just keep it together and it's going to work for everyone..