Merit system is really great and can remove a very large number of people (mostly bots) who are currently abusing the bounties everywhere. But about the higher ranks, as you mentioned, such as Jr. Member and above is still worthless as they can still abuse them by "buying" more accounts. And I believe that they'd have made enough to drop a shit worth of BTC off their pockets and buy those cheap Jr. Member accounts, hire some manpower and give them pennies to use their accounts and rank up, be it potential accounts or current Jr. Member accounts and above.