People get what they pay for.
(There could be a long discussion here about expectations placed on unpaid maintainers, and what the real purpose of Open Source / Free Software is beyond merely being zero cost at the point of use, but those tend to just go round forever. There's even a paid alternative to Jellyfin: Plex.)
We can have a business model. I can pay the developer to prioritize my PR if I consider it worthy enough that it solves my pain point. Companies do that as I have heard. There could be a Groupon like model where multiple people facing the issue can pool the money for prioritization.