machiavelli

Only the first of four items in your list did Machiavelli advocate in The Prince; none of the items you mention were virtues to Machiavelli in The Discourses.

With that same argument Machiavelli is not relevant because his advice was intended for a medieval Italian prince.

Of note, Machiavelli was tortured by the Medici's so the sadism, in particular, he'd have found offensive.

Most people associate Machiavelli with a devious, twisted mind when he was actually simply a pragmatic.

One theory is that Machiavelli wrote The Prince to make the common man aware of behaviors and practices of powerful people.

Take Machiavelli - did he make politics worse by describing how it works?

Except that Machiavelli didn't believe what you attribute to him.

Encourage sociable, pleasant employees to read Machiavelli and Sun Tzu.

Its a lot more entertaining with stories, (Also - if you want a mindfuck, you should read The Prince by Machiavelli and The Hero by Baltasar Gracian back to back.

A generous prince will ruin the citizens by taxing them too heavily, a mean prince (and Machiavelli does not say that meanness is a good quality in private men) will save the purses of the citizens and so add to public welfare.

Even in the case of manipulation and deception by a prince (think governance not commerce) - Machiavelli viewed it as virtuous only given the state of affairs among the competing principalities and countries of the time.

In fact, the situation that police unions exist to protect their members against was detailed by Niccolo Machiavelli in 16th century, when he provided an account of Cesare Borgia, who was unburdened by heavy scruples, and Remirro de Orco, a brutal but useful man for whom things ended very badly.

Machiavelli, Chaucer, and their peers around the time of Gutenberg are all "too late" in the 14th century.

Reading "The Prince" by Machiavelli would also be a good companion to these, though its focus is quite different.

Maybe you'd like to follow that up with "The Art of War", by Niccolo Machiavelli?

Machiavelli himself would go "Dang, that's dark dude".

The Prince was Machiavelli's Leviathan, his answer to the nasty, brutish and short state of nature.

This is reminiscent of Machiavelli's The Prince, which is a very interesting read far more nuanced than popular knowledge would imply.

And the cruel pranksters follow Machiavelli's blueprint to make the Internet respected, through terrorism.