[nerdponx]

It has more to do with the idea that the system has evolved and advanced for a while. It's not so much about the system ending soon, as it is about it being deeply entrenched and widely adopted, its long-term negative consequences having had time to manifest, and/or being the late stages of a deliberate long-term agenda.

[Tronno]

That might be reading into it too much. I'm pretty sure it's just a joke that capitalism is cancer. As in, "late-stage cancer".

[nerdponx]

Synonymous terms have been used in leftist/Marxist literature for a long time, that's always where I assumed it came from: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/late-ca...