So here's next dimension Merit discussion thread 2.0 in which we are going to discuss if someone has deserved his Merit.
I am wondering: is it the fault of the one who has given sMerit, or is the one who has received it to blame?
Buying and selling or merits is not allowed and will be tagged accordingly. There is no doubt about that. Now coming to your question, the merit-worthiness of a post is a subjective concept and there is no hard and fast rule so as to what is considered as merit worthy. It depends on the Merit source member - but in general quality posts are merited.
Still a worthless post being merit will be frowned upon by others - might even end up in removal of the merit source. Though we have not seen any such cases yet.
Merits received for the bounty in my opinion are not entirely honest. People give their manager a sign of appreciation that the campaign was successful, but this violates the very essence of the merit system. Initially, it was aimed but that would stimulate people to create high-quality content, and eventually becomes a sort of forum token.
This is where it has become grey. Merit sometimes ends up in being a token of thanks which denies the actual reason why it was introduced - to prevent spammers to ranking up.