For sure, and in fact, I very happy with the current behaviour. I guess the pager is a case where it doesn't matter much if it's included or not since I guess it doesn't get in the way if you pipe to something else. Does it consume extra resources?

    git log | wc

vs

    git log --no-pager | wc

I'm sure it's neither here nor there in practice. More of a hypothetical question.