I think you should consider the ability to buy merit for yourself. You can already effectively do this by way of purchasing a copper membership. Based upon the fact that well under 1% of active users have received a single merit, there need to be additional ways for people who do not post garbage to rank up.
Buying merit or normal ranks is like buying yourself a bunch of trophies to put on your shelf. It's stupid, and it's an insult to everyone who achieved it legitimately. I can't see ever doing that. I don't particularly mind letting people pay for some of the
privileges of these things, such as with copper membership, but it should be a parallel system.
Copper membership is good. Now, if you want to participate in signature campaigns, you can either pay the $10-$20 for copper membership or accomplish the herculean task of making
one good post. I don't think that it's unreasonable in either case.
If people are making good posts but are still struggling to get merit, then that's a problem with the merit system and should be fixed on my end. Demanding money in order to bypass a broken system would be
really bad. But AFAICT the merit system actually is reasonably effective at identifying good posters.
I really agree with you sir. Merit as the name imply should be earned, and not bought.
The rule is fair and should give newbies making good posts the chance to rank up through their God efforts.