[ANTSANTS]

To start, vector icons don't look as good at 16x16 or 32x32 as they do at higher resolutions. Pretty much every desktop environment that supports both large and small icons (whether with a native vector format or many scaled versions of large "master" icon) features separate, hand-edited icons for the lower resolutions, and often a completely redrawn simpler icon for the lowest (usually 16x16).

The Tango Icon Theme Guidelines state this explicitly: http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines\