Another way to think of it is: paying $1 to have your pr and concerns elevated above the supermajority sea (that which will be ai driven contributions). For that cost, it's a steal of the deal.

Then, from the perspective of "it's a donation to a project you care about" it becomes even more rational. But the project itself getting the money has all the problems others have outlined already, so that idea's a bit bust.

Most of my PRs are drive-by PRs: I have an problem, maybe a bug or missing feature, that annoyed me enough to fix it. And because I want to use future versions without the work of maintaining a fork I instead invest the work to upstream the fix. A step that is sometimes more work than the fix itself. At that point I wouldn't mind paying $1 to get that PR looked at and merged.

But that is not the only type of PR. We clearly need escape hatches for people who engage with a project on a deeper level.

The money is going to a charity of your choice.