-snip-
You can. People sell merits and it'll probably become big business. Most people will probably just cough up for Copper Membership rather than buy the one merit to become Junior though, but to become higher ranks merit will become increasingly harder to get and more valuable/costly.
Probably buying in 1 merit just to rank up junior member is not hard to find, but that is a risk to the merit sender once they have caught on MOD for sure there is a punishment to them(red tagged). I've lucky that I already rank up on this rank before the merit system was implemented and until now it is hard for me to hunt even a single merit and stuck up on this rank, but I don't mind it as long as I can help this community by sharing my thought to them using my genuine post even I'm not good in English.