The main issue this community is trying to prevent here is low quality posts eating up the merits in our economy. 
I don't know if that smiley indicates a joke but the reality is that (1) merits are not scarce and (2) merits that have been sent to alts probably wouln't have been put to good use anyway.
My main problem with alt merits is that it distorts the relative quality of posts/posters/ranks/etc and indicates the dishonesty of the perp.