Only signature and some airdrop require you to be a certain member rank. Other bounties will rely on what is important like follower count. You don't need to be a high rank to make money here, you just need to use your head. Not saying you not using your head I'm just saying being a high rank is not the be all and end all. People that run bounties want to know they getting good work from you and good exposure so your rank is of little concern since it only effects things within the forum and not externally like social media for example.
I still do not get the point for this merit system, i think it was not required, instead there should have been a penalty system, for example, if someone is posting spam or low quality posts then his activity could be reduced by 1 for each spam or low quality post, i hope all the respected forum members will agree with me.
The merit system is not going away, so you better get used to it, also your suggestion does not make sense because what it is going to stop a person to just create another account and begin to spam with it? This is why the merit system was implemented, to limit the activities of account farmers which will eventually sell those accounts which then will be used to scam or spam.
No.... It's meant to stop people writting crap posts. It will make account farming harder but not stop it. That's not what it's for anyway. Like I say it's for adding quality posts and if account farmers want to farm they now have to make quality posts which makes them not account farmers.