Can social sciences contribute to the betterment of the humankind?

Based on the humankind's experience so far, it is highly doubtful that more social engineering, even of a more enlightened kind, would ever make much difference in how human societies work.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Human group dynamic inevitably produces hierarchies, warring cliques, and waste. Simply improving living conditions does not result in better human beings, simply in more comfortable and more energy-intensive environments to produce hierarchies, cliques, and waste. Like Dostoyevsky once asked to the effect of  "what do you do once everyone's fed?" Real change starts only within.