Quantifying the price of anarchy has given the field a concrete and rigorous way to assess the pros and cons of decentralized systems, which has broad implications across any number of domains where people find themselves involved in game-playing (whether they know it or not). A low price of anarchy means the system is, for better or worse, about as good on its own as it would be if it were carefully managed. A high price of anarchy, on the other hand, means that things have the potential to turn out fine if they're carefully coordinated-but that without some form of intervention, we are courting disaster. The prisoner's dilemma is clearly of this latter type. Unfortunately, so are many of the most critical games the world must play.