The first order effect of this would be great, but the following onslaught of schlinkert spam would be devastating- its bad enough now with people making garbage dependencies and sneaking them in everywhere just for clout

Sadly I think this is true. There is already a problem with people making useless dependencies and pushing them into projects with PRs to increase their download numbers.

Showing high download numbers on your resume is more valuable than anything a fund like this could provide. There will always be a company who views high NPM download numbers as a signal of top 1% talent, even if it has become a game in itself.

It might make the maintainers of if the rest of the pie vigilant for dependency spam that would cut into their end.