If so. No matter what contribution I make, I will always be a novice if I do not have merit. And my account became useless. Because almost no one spends time giving merit to newbie. 
Sentences like this make me think this system is needed more than ever, and im pretty happy about this new 1merit step for jr membership.
I joined this forum few months ago because i wanted to contribute, after months of lurking for learning.
Most of the ppl i interact with are here to share their knowledge and learn more.
All the ppl i read complaining (crying/begging) about merit are here whishing for free easy money (as if this forum owed something to them by birth right).... spending time ruining everybody experience with useless spam....
I repeat: I had 0 merit few time back (as a lot of users like me).... make some useful contribution to the community and merit will come
Keep crying because you want to join bounty and spam.... 1merit for jr member? Lets make it 10
Exactly.. case in point. I see that your membership, Speculatoross, began a few days before the implementation of this merit system, so even though it might take you longer to rank up under this new system, you are providing a decent dent into earning merits along the way, and like you suggested, if your goal is to learn and participate in the contents of the threads (bitcoin and perhaps crypto), you will likely earn merits along the way based on your participation... even if you are starting as a newbie, and even if it may take a bit longer to build up a few merits and to get some upwards earning momentum going.
By the way, I would be inclined to agree that something like 3 merits to rank up to Jr. Member as an earlier poster suggested; however, we likely need to see whether 1 merit remains sufficient to weed out a large majority of the shitposting, farmed accounts, spam, shills, trolls and scammers, and I would not be opposed to increasing the Jr. Member requirements at some later date, if theymos concluded that the 1 merit requirement was not sufficiently weeding out some of the problematic post (posters).