I am sure that 16MB flash nonsense is not so much about money as it is about technology. I’ve recently posted my thoughts about it here. Now I just wanted to add that the reason all Mikrotik devices with SPI flash chips are limited to 16MB might be the relatively old kernel in v6. Though should it be true, it does not explain why Chateau has 16MB of flash while being a v7 only device…
Talking about workarounds, I would not hold my breath too much. All the workarounds proposed have a significant development effort associated with them, while the chances to return the investments are pretty unclear.