I agree that Apple most certainly does use that 8GB more efficiently but it's still a load of BS to be charging that much and only getting 8GB. Additionally, I took his advice of going to the store and testing out 8GB vs. 16GB when I bought my M1 Mac Mini and I concluded that 8GB wasn't going to be enough.
If you do next to nothing on your Mac but browse the web and diligently close every single tab when done, sure. 8GB might be enough but if your daily life is running Chrome, Slack, Discord, some Adobe software, Signal, some music apps, etc. You're going to hit that swap hard and then you run into SSD lifespan issues.
I'm not saying it's the cause or fix by any means since there's countless other factors at play, but Mac revenue is down 34% year-over-year. Maybe ripping off your customers on RAM pricing isn't helping.