I will concede that I did not believe that the merit distribution would drop so low because I presumed that more people would spend their smerits as they learned about the system and there would be a kind of rippling effect from the continued spending, and I also presumed that sources would either continue to spend or perhaps increase their spending as they got used to the system... which seems to NOT be happening.
In the past week (from Friday to Friday), 3481 Merit points were transfered. That's 3481/7*30=14918 per 30 days.
It would be interesting to see how many of those came from Merit sources, who generate
up to 19500 sMerit in the same period. But since not all Merit sources are known, I won't try to get the number.
I've still never been able to empty my source sMerit, and "my own" sMerit has now piled up to exactly 300. From now on, I'll try to keep my source sMerit under 10 (and 0 would be fine too). If it's higher (as it is now, I'll Merit more posts.
I've started this right now, meriting 8 different posts in 2-3 seconds (yes, I try to break my record

).