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I just don't wanna get fucked on the steam fame :(
They could easily sell a cheaper Steam Machine by selling a barebones version without RAM or storage.
Especially when it comes to the storage which is by far the biggest cost after the RAM, I am pretty sure there are tons of people who already have a spare NVMe drive they could use.
You're missing the point of what and who they are for. If someone has an NVMe just lying around, they probably also have a PC at least comparable in performance to a steam machine. Even more so for the RAM.
They are for people who have consoles and maybe a laptop, but want something just a turn key to game on. At their tv.
I have heard many people say they would consider buying it if it was much cheaper, even though they have a capable gaming PC. Also, it doesn't cost Valve anything offering a barebones version. Unless they don't want to do it because their stock is limited and it is not just an issue of RAM and storage availability.
Of course it costs valve something to offer more versions. It's all inventory that has to be created, tracked, shipped, warehoused. Going from 2 to 4 versions in hardware configurations at that scale isn't cheap, and most certainly not free.
And yes, their stock is also limited. How limited exactly we don't know, as I don't think they've said that publicly. You also have to decide on some number of devices to not equip with memory/storage to sell as barebones, which will have some margin of error that is now sitting around unsold, or everything sells out and they could've sold it just as well with memory/storage and made more money.
But the point isn't to become a vendor for cheap-ish computers. The point is to sell computers so they can sell games, and offering a barebones version is unlikely to justify the considerable overhead that would require.
Finally, they are trying to create a somewhat default/reliable platform for steam games in terms of performance. Game studios are going to make presets for this so the players can expect a certain performance. If you only pop in 4 GB (or they get resold on the used market for with 4 GB) it might perform way worse or even crash. They probably also don't want to inflate or encourage the number of devices that fall into that category.