You are absolutely right about rent. Its effect is not limited to techno - rent extraction is a damper on everything in the economy (except for rent extraction).
Imagine a guy comes around to your house every month and demands $1000 or else he breaks your kneecaps. You'd be quite motivated to ensure you can make that $1000 each month and you'd not be left with as much energy for doing everything else you might want to do. That's essentially the economic effect of rent. At least taxes are indexed to your income, so you can always afford to pay them; rent is not.
I moved to Berlin 15 years ago in my mid 20s. Back then we didn’t work very much, we constantly had hangovers, we were constantly out, running around Neukölln and Kreuzberg.
Whenever I chat to that age group now, while they often look the part, they’re actually tired, overworked, cash-strapped, and living far from the center of the city.
A good weird party scene needs that bad-judgment-high-enthusiasm energy of the young, and now there’s much less of it.
As someone who considers themselves somewhat principled, I would be somewhat more motivated to spend that month in exercise and martial arts training, to allow myself the opportunity to terminate this questionable attempt at a contractual relationship on the man's part. Replace acquiring 'physical fitness' with 'understanding of the minutiae of state and federal renting laws' though, and I think that would just about characterise my response to an obnoxious landlord, too...
Imagine a guy comes around to your house every month and demands $1000 or else he breaks your kneecaps. You'd be quite motivated to ensure you can make that $1000 each month and you'd not be left with as much energy for doing everything else you might want to do. That's essentially the economic effect of rent. At least taxes are indexed to your income, so you can always afford to pay them; rent is not.