I absolutely agree with you, and I hold no grudges against anyone who has given merits to Theymos or Satoshi--it's only my opinion that doing so doesn't benefit anyone, and the reality is that those sMerits that you can send are very valuable, particularly to anyone who isn't Legendary yet and hasn't yet gotten the requisite 1000 merits to achieve that rank. 

I also know by saying this that I'm a complete hypocrite, because I've given merits to Legendary members for good posts, though lately I've been trying not to.  It's become pretty obvious to me that in the past year that ranking up is really hard for a lot of members.  Part of that is because of all the shitposts, and I'd say the majority of people don't deserve to rank up, but there are members out there who probably should be ranking up faster.  MagicSmoker is one member who comes to mind, but he doesn't seem all that concerned about rank.  He makes excellent posts IMO, but it's more likely that he's just not active enough to be above Full Member. 

It all comes down to this for me:  if I find a hidden gem somewhere, i.e., a post that I find very constructive and unmerited, I want to have enough sMerits on hand to give them to that post.  If I've 'squandered' them on a Legendary member, I feel a tinge of guilt.  That's just me though--and the situation right now is mitigated by the fact that I was made a merit source and therefore have many more sMerits than I did previously.  I've got no problem with differences in opinion about this, as long as someone isn't handing out merits to alt accounts or engaging in any kind of merit abuse.