Grants are a very effective model of support, it seems to work for entire industries + professions around the world. Even better when there is a body of professionals working democratically to decide which people should be awarded the grants.
Just because you have a failure of imagination doesn't mean others do.
It would be a huge public service if you could get more public support for open source. Maybe you could do it instead of criticizing Ryan!
Some public support for this kind of work already exists, especially for the Python science ecosystem, but nothing that comes close to "competing" with VC for a project like Deno.
You should be the change you hope to see in the world and make this happen!