Yup. I've seen the way I get merit. Some posts I consider good and informative are not merited at all sometimes, while sometimes posts get merited for no particular reason - I guess that somebody was just agreeing with me.
Also I've seen merit given out only for a funny picture or comment. So.. yeah.. it's extremely subjective.

On another hand, I think that theymos should spend a minute on this. This looks like "helping out" the people based on nationality. I mean, OK, he gives out 1 merit for a not-really-worthy post. But 4 merit is.. hmm..
If he also rewards big numbers of good posts, then it's false alarm. But I guess that it could be checked.