The answer is yes. The answer about how bad is really bad. We humans have never before understood how essential our innate collaboration is nor. Nor have we ever understood how fragile it is. Here are some thought experiments for you.
Take a colony of ants and destroy their ability to use a pheromone trail. What happens?
Take a colony of ants and use the pheromone trail to generate "profit" for some of the ants at the cost of others.
Ants probably have little self consciousness. But add that awareness to them - essentially tell them they are being manipulated - and then perform the above two experiments again.
A good way to understand complex adaptive systems, like the ones we humans use, is to try to build some. See John Holland's "Hidden Order" for some hints on how to go about this.