I think it will be a good idea, My suggestion is maybe they can add assistant moderator in this forum which having a huge amount of merits that can distribute to all deserving. We also know that moderators are busy and maybe this is the answer to that issue. Assistant moderator will be a big help to lessen people's that abuse merit and it can enhance efficiency of the whole forum. It will be a tool to balance the system I guest.
I like it the current way only as it ensures that members are involved in the betterment of the forum. However, I think that number of merits in circulation per month need to be increase a lot . It should be at least 10 times the current supply and this can be easily done by allocating more merits to each merit source per month. I was able to get some merits when the merit system was new and I think it was from the senior members who must have given default merit points. Now that most have spent those, there is shortage of merit points in comparison to that time.