I think there are a lot of thoughtful comments here.
I think I hear a lot of people pointing to the
externalities that golf carts create, and that creating disincentives exacerbates the hidden costs associated with carts.
I also understand controversial, but political advantageous nature of 'junk fees' in revenue generation, that is, fees that simply raise bottom line revenues, while leaving the top line prices the same. Here we can see that a 'walking fee' is simply a
de facto increase in the daily fee, which equates to a price increase for everyone, but with a reduction in the cart fee in real terms. I can see why this would concerns about the externalities cause by carts, if what we're seeing is really a reduction in the disincentives for cart use.
The result is not exactly a
dark pattern, but it's certainly a bit of shenanigans when it comes to open an honest pricing. I don't know much about the ins-and-outs of club politics, but I'd hope that a club I was a member of would (1) take externalities seriously, especially with something as expensive as course maintenance, and (2) would be willing to have open and frank conversations about revenues rather than offloading needed revenue generation onto one subsection of players arbitrarily.