The simple fact is that a 16 GB RAM stick costs much less than the development time to make the app run on less.
The costs are borne by different people: development by the company, RAM sticks by the customer.
A company is potentially (silently?) adding to the cost of the product/service that the customer has to bear by needed to have more RAM (or have the same amount, but can't do as much with it).
That said, I think it’s more of a collective action problem. The person who could pay for the refactor to operate in 640 K is not the same person who has to pay for the 16 GB. And yes, the 16 GB is cheap enough in comparison to other costs that the latter group doesn’t necessarily notice that they are subsidizing inefficient development.
Not that I agree of course :) I’m talking more of the net negative of everyone needing to buy 16gb sticks so developers can YOLO vibe-coded unoptimized garbage. But at least I think the former explanation is what stavros meant :)