I think that's kinda the point: you don't get to control every little detail. Your funds get spread across the dependencies you use. Those funds then get spread

I think that's kinda the point: you don't get to control every little detail. Your funds get spread across the dependencies you use. Those funds then get spread across the transitive dependencies, recursively. Maybe what's trivial to you saves the maintainer of one of your dependencies a bunch of time, and warrants some contribution. That's up to them, not you. And in this scenario, if you remove that dependency top level, while it still might get some cut transitively, it gets far less, so you've still made a statement.