I dunno to me it sounds horrific that Machiavellism is accepted without a pause knowing how inefficient and detrimental it is for human cooperative endavours. History showed us that unchecked Machiavellism causes dynamics to devolve to paranoidic-zero-sum social dynamics. Although is an aspect of our psychology we shouldn't just rationalize it as a force of nature. When we talk we cynically opt to talk about optics so casually that's exactly what we're doing.