I presume (hope) there are others like me, who are less interested in the monetary rewards than in the intellectual rewards from participating. Thus, perhaps decoupling the rank and the merit system, and only use the merit system to have influence on the monetary benefits, maybe that would be cleaner in term of incentives? It would certainly work for me.
I don't agree. Rank of the member should mean his "seniority" not only by number of posts, but also by quality of posts. I think that nobody wants Hero members that are posting shitposts in this forum. So i like the idea that members should qualify for a higher rank only if they post something meaningful. If you are more interested in intellectual benefits, then there is no need for the rank upgrade anyway..
The other thing is that it's currently quite difficult to get some merits. It looks like a very long journey to upgrade from Member to a Full Member for example, even for users that are posting quality posts. I hope this will get better once there are more sMerits available from Merit sources.