Earned-merits or trust points are not determinant factors for post quality of posters. They are only one of componental factors and they serve as supplementary inclusive factors for poster's quality assessment. Generally, to assess post quality of one user, readers have to consider lots of things:
- Most important thing is average quality of posts: by checking post history. Without statistics on earned-merits. For example, if we assume that statistics disabled by admin, we all can assess post quality through post history.
- Total earned-merits. They are important, just behind average post quality over post history. Good posters tend to receive significant merits in total, over time. That statistic give us a quick overview on post quality of posters. Then next step will be checking whole post history or at least very recent posts.
I meant if there are two users with nearly same earned merits, we have to look at post history to see how different their post qualities are.  It is clearly that readers can flip between two things: post history and earned merits, in orders of priority. There is nothing wrong because at the ends, readers have to combine two things in order to have a final overview on post quality of posters.
We should not totally rely on earned merits.
- Trust points (that are a little bit unncessary because trust was initially designed for exchanges, not post quality). However, somehow readers can take a quick look at trust points, and feedbacks, and use them as supplemental factors.