That seems true -- if you've got the right path to maximizing global utility. Making this call requires a certain baseline level of rationality, which we may or may not possess and which we're very much prone to overestimating.

The consequences of not making the right call, or even of setting the bar too low whether or not you happen to pick the right option yourself, are dire: either stalemate due to conflicting goals, or a doomed fight against a culturally more powerful faction, or (and possibly worse) progress in the wrong direction that we never quite recognize as counterproductive, lacking the tools to do so. In any case eudaemonic improvement, if it comes, is only going to happen through random walk.

Greedy strategies tend to be fragile.