[nateglims]

Originally, it's the idea that capitalism will have a terminal crisis (i.e. die off) and we are in this final crisis because it will hit a state where productivity cannot be increased and so profit will be too difficult to increase.

In practice, technology and some major events have prevented this from happening. The modern left-wing view is that we have run out of new frontiers to exploit, so the capital class will (has) return to reducing labor costs with more extreme measures among other tactics.

With recent events like a major labor shortage (or future one due to declining population) in the developed world, climate change, a stagnation in productivity per person, gig economy emergence, and widespread privatization being viewed as very destructive; this idea has gotten more popular. Part of this is driven by some companies, especially in tech, having manic levels of optimism about frivolous things.

Personally, it kind of sounds like Malthus. But it is hard to deny that we are in a slump of sorts and that startups that sound like scams appeared to be more common for a while.