Social engineering has been along for ... well, since we ended prehistory. The convergence to monotheism with very specific demographic outlooks and group self-identification ("we are the chosen people, the others are not") is early evidence of social engineering.

> Sadly politics is about the immediate results, and does not even attribute the long term consequences to the policies introduced 2-3 generations ago.

Our modern political systems at the current scale have been around for only a few short hundred years. Time will tell how they work out, but I doubt they will be eternal.