I've done that. But my point is that the distribution shouldn't include an indecent pager by default, especially for something as fundamental as man. I installed from void-live-x86_64-20150713.iso and less was installed. I assume, but don't know, that it is installed by default by the other live images. But if it isn't, it should be. Not being able to move around freely in man pages is a real problem, and I think many will not know how to change the pager. And they shouldn't have to.

i think that argument could be made for some distributions.

for a distro like void, a user could be reasonably expected to know how to change their $PAGER or at least learn how to do this.

I'm sorry, but I completely disagree. One of the jobs of a distribution-maker is to choose sensible defaults. That's true of even the most stick-shift, anti-Ubuntu distributions, like Arch, Slackware and Void. The virtue of these distributions is that they don't load you up with bloat from the moment they are installed. They give you the opportunity to start small and build as much of a computing environment as you need and no more. But for what they do provide, it makes no sense to choose bad defaults, as 'more' is in the 'man' case (in my opinion), on the grounds that "anyone using this distribution should know how to change this".