"Cycling tax"?
I come from the world of Corvettes and for generations now we have what we refer to as the "Corvette tax". That is additional expense added to ordinary items, or completely dedicated items, specifically for the purpose of extracting more money from owners than your average transportation appliance.
Do we as cyclists suffer the same tax? I think we do. Case in point. A few years ago when I began to get serious about biking, I went to Walmart and found a CO2 inflator that takes the standard 12g CO2 cartridges just like every Daisy BB gun made in the last 50 years. If I had known then what I know now, I would have bought 50 of them. The inflator cost something like $10 and you can get a 5 pack of 12g Daisy cartridges for $2.50. Now that my bike collection has expanded, I have tried to find the same inflator to no avail. I can find various 16g and 20g cartridges, some with threaded fittings, some without. And I can find inflators that accept 16g or 20g cartridges. And of course, the inflators are $20-30 on average and you pay almost as much for a single threaded 16g cartridge as you would for a 5-pack of 12g Daisy cartridges. But that cheap inflator that accepts cheap 12g cartridges has gone the way of the dinosaur.
So must we accept being screwed just because our hobby is seen as a cash cow by specialty producers? Have you seen this in your experience in the hobby?