On a Mission to Upgrade US Government Operating Systems to be more Fair, Certain, Inclusive & Sustainable for its people
My name is Bob Simmons. As the story goes, my grandfather was a Russian Jew (last name Simon), who came to America, fell in love with an Irish Catholic girl, and decided to change his name to Simmons in order to marry her. This apparently did not go well with his family, who shunned him for the longest time.
My Mom was an artist and athlete turned teacher; my Dad an athlete and Marine turned retail store manager, and though I have degrees in writing and music, and multiple teaching credentials, I chose to remain a sports instructor and coach for the past 40 years. I routinely get to berate top athletes, CEOs, scientists, lawyers, doctors, nurses, and all manner of engineers, and they pay me for this abuse, because they desire to learn something I happen to know a lot about: competition, or more specifically, winning, and the effort, strategy, psychology, and skills involved in order to achieve it.
Whether it’s love or war, economics or existence itself, humans cannot help but make everything a competition, but the real truth of human progress is effort; significant and deliberate effort. In order to spark effort, a purpose is needed; “passion” is the latest bait we use to lure our children toward effort. “Winning” is the lure used in “free” society. In repressive societies, the threat of torture or death is the main motivator. The ultimate purpose of mastery, however, is to dig deep enough under the opacity of ignorance until you uncover the truth about yourself; dig even deeper, and you discover who we all are. That is when you realize you would like to see every one win – to perhaps create a “game” that is not rigged or flawed – where no matter who comes out on top, every one can prosper. This is now become my purpose.
Thanks to the faculty at Harvard, Oxford, and M.I.T., along with individual experts, authors and researchers, I now have a working knowledge of subjects like economics, government, energy, agriculture, healthcare, communication, game theory, urban development, Wall Street and the Federal Reserve. All it takes is effort; 15 years of it so far.
Each of us has formidable knowledge within our specific fields, and most of us have a notion that the problems of society are interrelated, but each of us has only one piece of an extremely large puzzle. Only with a synthesis of knowledge from many different disciplines could anyone piece together the bigger picture of this giant puzzle, and see the points where all of society’s negative externalities intersect. This is where the “game” itself is flawed, and should be fixed.
Long story short, I have fashioned a theory, and behind it, the simplest and least invasive strategy for improving our circumstances, and now wish to promote this strategy until it resonates enough within the population that they are moved to implement it.
I am not attempting to change the world – the world is fine the way it is – and I am not attempting to change people, because we are not particularly capable of changing anyway. I only wish to debug our current operating system, so that it works better. How I will achieve this victory for every one has yet to be determined, but one thing I do know: people, while generally horrible at changing from within, are amazingly good at adapting to changes that occur around them. Should we succeed together in fixing this currently flawed (and certainly rigged) game, the good news is that people will most assuredly adapt to it, because that is what we do.
I am available to write about the various infrastructure upgrades that will be needed in this emerging future, and I am happy to post articles on my website from others willing to share their expertise about these very same things.
