They aren't.

theymos has essentially created a democracy for choosing users to be DT1. The 250 merit cut off is to earn a vote, not to be trusted. No one (except theymos himself) is "trusted by default".

There needs to be a way to limit votes to real members, otherwise anyone (including scammers) could flood the forum with alts and vote themselves on to DT. Merit is a simple way of doing that. I struggle to go think of any other simple way to differentiate users other than a newbie jail, which brings with it a significant number of other problems. If you have any suggestions, I'm sure theymos would be interested to hear them, as OgNasty has said.

As an aside, thank you for starting a mature discussion and not just mudslinging.