What makes you say that? Yes, it is a goal. In fact, it appears to be THE goal, whether our human perspective likes it or not.
Societies follow the same optimization principles as everything else. If the topics of self-organization, similarity across scales and sustainability interest you, check out Geoffrey West's work at https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/geoffrey-west (among a lot of others).
Reducing energy across time is just a rewording of efficiency. It's still not a goal in and of itself, at least not in the context of a society.
Going to the moon was not reducing energy gradients across time, nor 'entropy maximization' as you have reworded it.