Blending Socialism with a Free Market could make Us Builders again.

Once upon a time we were a nation of creators.  We built things and then we sold a lot of those things around the world.  Over the last few decades we have stopped building and creating.  Manufacturing jobs have gone to other shores.  Ships are built in Asia and Scandinavia.  Except for military ships and tanks and other things.  But Military construction even though it is necessary to a degree, does nothing to contribute to the  building of our infrastructure.  Now when someone wants to create something or build something a huge NIMBY protest pops up to prevent it.  Speaking just for my own home state, we have prevented the establishment of LNG offloading and storage, several casinos, some wind farms, just to name a few.  But it would seem that this is common throughout the nation.  We here in the US have don't seem to want to build things, we don't want to increase our tax base or create jobs.  But we still want all the services and benefits. I don't think we can have our cake and eat it too. 
Renewable energy projects would create work.  Putting public money into infrastructure projects would also create jobs.  We need to build out and upgrade our countries rail systems.  Doing this would also create jobs.  But how to do this best?  I think we need a blend of jobs programs and social programs that inject money into the economy.  This could be coupled with other changes that would let private enterprise flourish. 
One huge issue, that Senator Bernie Sanders actually introduced legislation to fix, is that companies become too big to be allowed to fail.  No Corporation or company should get so large that their failure would crater a section of the economy.  When a company gets that large they should be divested and made into smaller companies.  The second part to this is that corporations should always be regarded as instruments of business.  They are not people and should not have the same rights as people under our constitution.  By allowing them such we essentially allow a potentially immortal being with potentially large resources at hand.  This gives a corporation undue influence in our government. 
So could this be solved and fixed?  It could, but will it happen in our lifetime?  As long as people are made to fear the bogeyman of socialism the answer is no.  With a little effort we could meld the two systems and make something that works for all of us.  We could become creators again.