Oh, then a printer secretly storing that representation of the key doens't matter, correct?

Can't you buy a 50 printer, print it and destroy it after that?

Of course, because that drastically reduces the key space.

Before: 2^2048, After: 256^20 = 2^160 (when using a 20 key password. Obviously you could use looong random generated passphrases, but then you could just base64encode your key?)

2^160 is still a massive key space for symetric encryption.

Symetric and asymmetric encryption don't have the same key length standards.

What's the point of encrypting it? It seems like just another thing to mess up, and much more likely that you'll forget the password versus someone breaks into your house, goes into your safe, and knows what a private key is.