Merits will never have a value
My signature campaign already announced to require all participants to have
earned at least 10 Merits four weeks from now. That gives a (large) monetary value to Merit.
Isn't this propagating the problem? Merits start having a monetary value and there are only a number of merit sources who (except goodwill) are not obliged at all to give you merit. I find the idea behind merits perfectly OK, it is the execution that is flawed.
Some tweaking is definitely needed in order to make sure that merit does not become the very problem it intended to solve.