From what I can see the way this is set-up is open to a different type of abuse, a kind of out of the frying pan and in to the fire type of situation because the bump-power can be purchased as well as mini-bumping still going on directly from posting.
This new strategy does not exactly fill me with confidence - unless I am missing something from the OP
Only users who earned merits in the last year can bump and their bump power is proportional to the amount of earned merits and it's not unlimited. That's a HUGE difference from what we had before when any newbie could bump by posting any nonsense any number of times.
Well that alleviates some of my concerns about the new system. I guess over a period of time things will become clearer as and when sock-puppet newbies post but they fail to pump the thread then hopefully they will give up and leave the forum.