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Here's the thinking:
Joe Random User finds out about bitcoin, and decides "what the heck, I'll check it out."
They run it. First thing it does is ask him for a passphrase, with tons of "DO NOT FORGET YOUR PASSPHRASE" and/or "CHOOSE A LONG PASSPHRASE" warnings. What does he do? Many users will either:
1. Type "passphrase".
or
2. Bang on the keyboard to create a long, random passphrase: "b;lkaj425[09234kjvfda,nvfd;nkj34toht4"
He gets a little coin from the Faucet, writes me an email asking when they will arrive (because he hasn't yet downloaded the entire blockchain and didn't bother to read the information about that on the Faucet's "Sent!" page), and then shuts down the client.
Time passes. Eventually the Faucet coins show up.
He decides Bitcoin really doesn't suck as much as he first thought, so he decides to buy some Bitcoin on Mt. Gox.
Time passes while Dwolla verifies his bank account and stuff.
Then he buys Bitcoin, and manages to send them and see them show up in his running Bitcoin.
Yay!
Time passes. He decides he wants to spend the Bitcoin, and now he has to enter the passphrase that he set a week or three ago. But back then, wallet security wasn't at all important to him. He didn't have an Bitcoins to keep secure.
So either he forgot that his passphrase is "passphrase" or he remembers that he typed a bunch or random letters just so he could get past that annoying "enter passphrase" dialog box so he could just try the damn thing.
In short: wallet encryption is not the default because the right time to enter a passphrase to encrypt the wallet is when you KNOW that the wallet is valuable, and will take the steps necessary to protect it.