Requiring applicants to pay a fee will mean that the positions that I have to apply for that either do not exist, or are opened "just in case", or are market research, or the COA positions to push internal candidates, or any one of countless similar positions, will require me to pay out of pocket. Not exactly fair from my perspective.

Isn't this Musk's solution to stopping Xitter spam? Promote subscribed accounts more, so it costs money to speak.

Isn't a better solution to create a reputation score just for email addresses? You start out very low, and sending emails further lowers your score. However, every email that is read (and not marked spam) increases it a little more. If reputations start out just marginally above the "straight to spam" tolerance level, then spam accounts can only get out a few emails.