In reply to all:
There's an aspect of this which people are ignoring, or simply haven't realised ......
Climbers who leave static ropes in situ are very likely to be cleaning and restoring old routes and/or establishing new ones. This work can be quite physically demanding and time-consuming, and it does benefit the whole climbing community. When doing consecutive days of such work, and time is short (it almost always is), and energy reserves finite (they always are), the last thing you want to do is pull down your (often wet/muddy) ropes at the end of each session, and at the start of the next day clipstick your way up bolts, or get the ropes up in some other (usually tortuous) way.
"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" is the phrase which springs to mind.