Machiavellian is such an odd word. People use it to mean mendacious, cunning, self-serving...but Machiavelli himself spent his later years in political exile.
His seminal work reads like a groveling apology masquerading as advice to the politicians who had banished him.
IMO, the word works fine for describing someone who gambled on their own dubious advice and lost. Even moreso if the loss stems from a cyclical event, like the boom/bust nature of financial institutions which let the Medicis buy their way to political power in the 1400s.
His seminal work reads like a groveling apology masquerading as advice to the politicians who had banished him.
IMO, the word works fine for describing someone who gambled on their own dubious advice and lost. Even moreso if the loss stems from a cyclical event, like the boom/bust nature of financial institutions which let the Medicis buy their way to political power in the 1400s.