While I partially agree with this, I don't think it's an issue. Area/Organization Lore shouldn't be responsible or required for basic, day-to-day knowledge.
Area/Organization Lore can't be rolled without an score, but let's make a mental exercise and assume it could (since the prohibition is just a rules construct). The difference between score 0 or 1 is pretty much nil. The person with no score is just more likely to botch.
Maybe we should just have a rule saying "after 1 season living in Place you can roll Area Lore (Place) even with no score, but with the 3 extra botch dice". But is this worth the ink or the time to type? Any storyguide should be capable of saying "ok, you have no training but you have been serving the Order of the Weekly Meetings for an year, make an Int roll to see if you recall what is the dress code for Tuesday evenings."
What I think we would benefit more than chopping "unnecessary" social skills would be short examples of what/how should these skills be used. Something similar to the combat examples, or to the example of Intrigue usage in HoH:TL p.24.