[Christ]

It's not a poor blanket statement, it's an accurate observation. If the pulley is larger, there is weight in places that it never used to be, meaning that there is more weight in those same places.

Then, you still have an increased drive ratio, which means that it's loading the engine more at a given speed than a smaller pulley would.

Milled and cast aluminum is generally not much lighter than a pressed pulley, either. It's like the difference between OE steel and OE aluminum wheels. There isn't much, generally. In specialty cases, the aluminum pieces are specifically designed to be lighter, but the average aftermarket piece isn't really there to increase performance, it's a shiny bit with the added benefit of a slight performance increase.

I still have to ask who was talking about overdrive pulleys?

I think you're referring to underdrive, in which case, the normal "fix" is to lower the size of the main pulley, rather than change each of the accessory pulleys. This means that the engine/accessory drive ratio is numerically lower, so the engine can turn easier with less accessory loading.

An overdrive setup, like you mention a few posts back, would either increase the size of the main pulley, or decrease the individual accessory pulleys in size.