After decaying unused sMerits in the future, it would be interesting if all accounts lose 1 Merit each Activity period. That would mean a Legendary shitposter suddenly turns into a Hero Member with 999 Merit.
I think that would be too much loss. Even if all the Legendary members posted extremely high quality posts, many of them would still drop in ranking. It would apply to every rank.
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. Update: this won't be required yet.
Some of yahoo's campaigns are starting to drop the payment for those without merit, and I anticipate more campaigns doing something requiring merit soon.