“For the traffic intersection problem, it turns out there is a solution that avoided coordination altogether. Not all problems have such a solution. For any given computational problem, how do we know if it has a coordination free solution, or if it requires coordination for consistency? To sharpen our intuition, we consider two nearly identical problems…[O]ne is coordination free and the other is not.”
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2020/9/246941-keeping-calm/fulltext