# Parallel Society - Marco Castignoli | Web3Privacy Now - Rome Meetup 2024

- Speakers: Marco Castignoli
- Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress)
- Date: 2025-10-07
- Duration: 20:02
- Topics: Education
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-s-v43r6i8y8
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-v43r6i8y8

## Description

Reimagining Democracy: Reducing Polarization, Enhancing Political Participation, and Promoting Prosperity

Marco Castignoli is a developer and open-source maintainer. He works with the Ethereum Foundation to make smart contracts human-readable and organized events with SpaghettEth.

ABOUT US

Web3Privacy Now is a think-and-Do-tank of hundreds of people, projects, and organizations committed to protecting and advancing civil liberties, decentralization, and open-source software.

We aim to manifest profound political and social change by advocating #privacy in the #web3 Era.

With unified efforts, we carve out a path toward a more equitable, decentralized and freedom-respecting digital commons. 

→ https://web3privacy.info/

## Transcript

[Music] hello hello everyone um so uh first of all I want to say sorry to look at leini because like my talk is kind of similar probably um I brought something from from the crypto environment instead of something from the past because we we learned before about distributism that is something that I didn't even know didn't even know about but as you can see the title is parallel society that is exactly the same uh key word parallel as as he said before um so let's start um this is like I don't know like my weak take on what are the main problem of societies right of society right now and I think we all share many of these um of these yeah like uh worries uh for example we have huge political crisis all around the world a lot of idea polar polarization and also something that is really important I think it's the weak political agendas that are that we see all around and I and I think that this is this is because the political agendas are not are not written because of um um like focusing on on the long term but they're just made to get more votes in in the next election in the next few years and then of course we have big wealth gaps so yeah like 97 word net wealth belongs to the top 30% of people and then all of us we we all have UNS unsustainable habits just just living in our society it means to to have unsustainable habits and this is something that I thought for a very long time and I think that there are basically uh two ways in which we can tackle these problems and the first one is by doing some happy growth meaning that we have basically to take whatever our lifestyle that we have now and simply reduce it and we we all start living like I don't know uh people from 100 years ago they were maybe maybe more than 100 years ago and the other um the other way that I think is quite promising is what I call Collective Prosperity um and in in this way uh the the society object objective is to offer cheap and high quality uh goods and services for everyone but of course without compromising uh its individual well-being and the environment itself and so my my my own experience with happy the growth started when when I finished high school and I tried living a different lifestyle and I spent a month in a in a niiko village in Canada and then I joined the Village movement here in Italy that is called um and what I what I took out of this experience is that it's the health the healthiest way in which human can can live because we in Eco Villages people live together people truly live in a way that we completely forgot how it is because it's basically living with with the with the community but not like the community in front of a screen but like with real people working together and living living together every day it's it's hard but it's something that I truly think it's amazing but the problem is most of the people are not ready for for this lifestyle and also I think that the life the lifestyle itself is a bit unsustainable why it's not working okay now we're back so um why I think this is this way is not sustainable first of all healthare Global Healthcare is has huge costs okay so it's like more than three trillion every year and if we want to raise this amount of money we have somehow to produce more and to make more money move around so that with that with the taxation we can achieve to to take care of of of every one of us and I think that this this is this is something that we cannot compromise we have we have to tackle Glo Healthcare somehow and then also current organic food production it's working because how we produce food food today so if we replace all of the junk food and like industry produced food with organic food then it's simply not sustainable like good food and good quality food right now it's just for a few people that can that have enough money to to have this kind of food because right now as it is right now food production needs to change in order to um in order for everyone to have organic and local food okay so let's go on with the other way um I think that there are several uh companies and nonprofit organization that are already tackling some of the biggest problem in our society but they have a huge problem of raising funds for example Mercato itinerante um it's an e-commerce that now it's based in toin and they do a lot of beautiful things this is a start is a startup is a it's a private company okay but they they focus on social reintegration projects with EXC convicts they they wellp paid they they offer a well-paid job for deliveries and and they prevent shop owners to going completely online because they they truly believe that the the soul of an Italian city lies uh in in its local markets and in and its local services and activities but what is the problem that no in no investors are interested in this project because of course there are no big gains out of this and again I brought um an example from the nonprofit organization that are trying to solve huge problems such as this organiz dis organization from gooni that is called steeli rise in which basically they offer top quality level education to vulner vulnerable children or all around the world and again maybe probably they found their own way to support their work and what they do but there are a lot of n nonprofit organization that they struggle every day so there is like there is no there is no magic uh rule to to find the stability for this kind of of organization but this is very different for my job for example so I work in the ethereum foundation and I I work full-time on a public good and I think that me other people like me are in this room right now and so basically what we do we build public goods and that's exactly what the other companies and organization were are doing right now but we live in this ecosystem that is full of money because of several reason probably probably mostly because there are a lot of people that are obsessed with the meme coins but that's good for us because we have money to build real good things and these are examples of foundations that are giving money to this kind of public goods and so I come from here and my idea is what if what if we apply the same concepts of raising funds in this way like the ethereum foundation does like optimism does like gitcoin does but to the real world I think it's sleepy okay and so here it comes the the idea so basically what I want to propose here and and this this is not a project I I had I had to do a premise before this is just an idea that I'm sharing here with you and so I I think that we can achieve something like the ethereum funds or gitcoin or Optimist funds by uh taking care of it ourself so and in order to achieve um a parallel so society that takes that takes care of these uh uh um without funds project um I think we have to implement some new form of governance some parallel taxation other than the one that we already pay to the state we have to take advantage of immutable contracts and we have of course to give the money that we raise to these uh to these Services okay so the basic flow for for for this proposal is first of all we start from uh taxation so we simply grow funds by collect by collecting taxes from every member and then with the with a different for form of governance so not the standard democracy that we know but may probably something like direct democracy or holocracia how to distribute These funds and we do not create new project from scratch but we Finance projects that are already Le that are already thriving that not not thriving but they already exist but they just need money to go on and so we Finance those project and we keep a we keep a part of these uh Revenue um so like we become um owner of a of a of a part of these companies and when there are gains out of these uh projects because the project grows then we get a small personal return and and this is the small incentive that that I think it's fundamental so instead of giving my money to a bank or to some protocol just because I have some money and I want this money to to I don't know to to yeah to to stake them in some way instead of doing that I entering in this cycle in which my personal return turn is small but what I know is that I contributed uh for big like ethical projects to to grow and prosper and again something that I think it's fundamental is that all the um money that are exceeding are going to uh help uh to reduce the taxation needed in order to support this cycle so that then new people can enter and new people can join and the end all of these new Services becomes uh exactly a parallel society that is uh for everyone and something that I didn't mention is that all of this will be um will be enforced by some smart contract and here again it's how the blockchain can help in all of this so that if a project is not maintaining uh its promises or if someone wants to to steal all the money then as smart contractor is enforcing that all of this flow is uh proceeding without any any problem in the middle and that's it for media I was it was a short [Applause] one I forgot to mention that if you're interested in any way uh this is just uh an empty telegram group that I created so if you want to join your yeah it's let's let's discuss about it together over there thank you Marco is there any question from the public yes we have one uh that's an old one but still uh interesting your opinion from a side uh so this old quote like don't fix settle problem with technology and what I found that in many cases whatever it's a network state or a dow it doesn't matter uh many attention um is dedicated to sort like how we transact and make decisions but but almost no decisions on how people make decisions how they do collaborate how the personality is involved how the Team Dynamics move on here and there and sort it's interesting that the the technicality is there because it's basically algorithmical thing is but then way more complex system or how we collaborate is not that approached ER in the projects like that for example how you what's your opinion on like how you not fix but how you would approach social side of the whole parallel thingy okay so a hard question again um so from my personal experience for example um we are currently working with other teams um to manage our project um in a way that is totally independent from any other uh organization and we decided for example to use the method of consensus and I think that the these social um the social part of of our of our teams it works because we are like a small team so we all know each other and the community is very yeah it's we are all close to each other and that's something that I didn't mention but I think that these these uh these kind of parallel societies are not to be um like it's not going to be one parallel society that governs and fixes the problem of the world but it's going to be like several uh small teams around the world that they care about their own uh uh local city or Village or whatever maybe not 20 so maybe I'm not answering your question but still I I think the the the social part if the group is not too large can be handled I have a question um here here here me um considering that um I mean the low the low gain Paradigm sometimes works it works for certain kind of people we that usually are not sociopaths but if you had to apply this model if you had to apply this model to a niche sector in order to make it scale so let's take this model and let's verticalized it on one of the many vertical Society has considering the low gain the low uh um payback that one will have what would be like what is the the first MVP that you would try to work this on um local food so so yeah as as I said before it's I I of course it's something that the parallel Society needs to decide every parallel Society needs to decide by themsel but for me one of the key focuses should be on like uh primary needs so food as I said or education uh yeah I think the these are the most important uh services that that we have to offer for everyone at a low price with a with a high quality okay but the this is considering humans are a priority some people working for the environment like many activists in Green Peace they are quite strong misanthropist maybe for right maybe they're right I don't know yeah yeah so if you if you want to give food to everyone then you you have to take this food you you wrote it that organic food is not scalable [Music] um so if would it still be food knowing that feeding everyone would deprive land out of their ability to regenerate I I I got what you mean yeah so as I said before I think like choosing which project to finance it it will not be like a straightforward task but I think it's it's it's something that need a lot of research in advance and for example for for that problem in particular about food and organic food not being sustainable I think that there are still a lot of uh there is still a lot of research going on for example I don't know using vertical farming or aquaponics or all of these kind of Technologies and if you I think that if if you raise money and and you have enough money to do both research and then financing the right project then it's something that it becomes feasible because then it's not just a guy here saying yeah I think that aquapon like like but you you can actually pay someone that go that that does a good research about the topic and yeah okay thank you really no okay thanks a lot Marco [Music]