"social ownership" refers to the various forms of ownership for the means of production in socialist economic systems; encompassing public ownership, employee ownership, cooperative ownership, citizen ownership of equity[1] and common ownership.[2]
As far as the meaning of socialism, I'd see an evolution of capitalism leading to the employee/cooperative ownership with less government interference. It makes sense that the people doing the work have a say in the company they are a part of. There could be problems, there are always problem with any system. But a fairer situation for all workers seems overall more beneficial to society as a whole.
The issues you are describing in the US don't seem to be socialist, they are consequences of capitalism. As a process capitalism focuses on concentration of power, rent-seeking, limitation of competition (through corporate lobby). Basically what we have now is capitalism, there is no perfect ideal capitalism that we would be better with, and should move towards, we've already gone down that path and these are the consequences. This to me is the reason why we should be honestly talking about trying something else, something better.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_ownership