Rougelikes definitely suffer if they do away with permadeath , but I don't think it's necessarily a requirement in general. Look at the still fairly active community around the Infinity Engine games, even before the Baldur's Gate rereleases.
permanent/costly death I think is the default state if you look back to arcade games. costly as in 1 quarter.
Well sure, because then they got more quarters. Replayability was a goal for arcade games because more replays meant more money. I think it more plausible that the arcade games that were successful still being fun the nth time made players ok with costly deaths than that costly deaths made people want to keep playing.
Chicken and Egg. Causality is not something easy to do more than speculate about. Also the early days were not so slick and formulaic. The Sid Meyer philosophy of game-making has steered games down a boring path.<-obvious hypocritical-ironic speculation.