If by forcing the nature of language, its history and evolution to fit your faulty premise isn't the sign of a "coffee house philosopher," I don't know what is. I won't argue with whether there exist or doesn't exist a collective mind--that's really of no consequence, presently. On the other hand your second sentence is not only anon sequitar it's also false. To make the statement that "workable concepts of language were the products of consistent systematization performed by a single person at some point and time," is patently absurd. The great "vowel change" and "consonantal shift" phenomena identified by the Grimms didn't occur because of a "consistent systematization performed by a single person."
Look at the evolution of the irregular form of the English verb to be. Am and is come from the West Germanic language group and are comes from the North Germanic Language. This didn't come about because of one individual but from a fusion of two different languages. Perhaps you'll wish to modify the language as a great innovation by making the conjugation regular like it is in Swedish (Jag ar, ni ar ...) or Ebonics(I be, you be, he,she, it be ...)! The history of English is replete with such examples proving your premise false: such as the entry of Norman French into the language, the relatively strange manner in which we use modal auxillaries (i.e. their meanings have changed which if not completely different from their Anglo Saxon root forms in usage` come pretty damn close), or the fact the the verb ordering we use was altered so it's akin to that which is used in French and not such as was used in Anglo Saxon or in modern day German, though the ordering of the modifier preceding the noun is retained like it was in Anglo Saxon. The evolution of slang,of pidgin and various jargon also points out the faultiness of your premise. Your earlier example of the Latin use of the letter V to represent the U sound, is correct, but the actual use of of these two letters in English was not consistent, (some used U to represent what we would call the V sound and V to represent what we would call the U sound,) the current sound which we now associate with each letter wasn't settled upon until the Elizabethan era.
Shakespere may have expanded the vocabulary of our language by introducing words of classical origin but such words had no "purchase" until they gained common use amoungst the people, nor was his introduction of them done, though innovative done with the intent of improving the language. The dirty little secret was Shakespere introduced them specifically because the common man didn't know their meaning and would interpret them differently than an educated man.
I could go on and on as to why your premise makes no sense at all but I fear that would be a waste of my time.
Here's a wonderful innovation you might press the Germans to make. It never made any sense to me why they spell words of older lineage with Greek roots such as philosophisch with the ph and words of more modern entry into the language such as Telefon with an f. I'm sure your brilliant innovation will straighten them up in no time.
Is this established fact? Or is it possible that are was also part of a WG language that died out sometime after English broke off? Does Frisian contain are?