But if Clippy has them, he can protect them more effectively than if they were in the custody of notoriously paperclip-immoral humans, who will callously sacrifice paperclips just to hold together some papers or shoot rubberbands with!
(If the latter 2 scenarios seem impossibly foul to you, I assure you that I have seen humans do such things with my own eyes, and lightly damn themselves out of their own mouths.)
I was actually responding to “Did you need any?”, the point being that it did not really matter once you made them whether you gave them to Clippy or not.
The distinction between making and buying them is not so important. When you demonstrate you are willing to buy something at a price someone else is willing to sell it for, you essentially cause more of that thing to be produced.
I was under the impression that Clippy doesn’t actually use paperclips, but rather, wants them to exist.
But if Clippy has them, he can protect them more effectively than if they were in the custody of notoriously paperclip-immoral humans, who will callously sacrifice paperclips just to hold together some papers or shoot rubberbands with!
(If the latter 2 scenarios seem impossibly foul to you, I assure you that I have seen humans do such things with my own eyes, and lightly damn themselves out of their own mouths.)
That’s why I mentioned I was making paperclips, not just buying them.
I was actually responding to “Did you need any?”, the point being that it did not really matter once you made them whether you gave them to Clippy or not.
The distinction between making and buying them is not so important. When you demonstrate you are willing to buy something at a price someone else is willing to sell it for, you essentially cause more of that thing to be produced.