The solution to the problem is remove the trashy merit system or reduce its purpose to what its design is useful for only: stopping bots ranking up.
There have been many good improvements suggested but of course those abusing the current flawed design for their own selfish gain (most of meta) are going to fight any changes.
This place generally runs as the community wills it to. The very fact that you have to resort to posting from an alt-account to make it look as though there's more dissent than there really is speaks volumes.
I would argue that willingly or not, many of the most high-ranking members here subvert themselves to rules and preferences of the administration, other than actively taking part to forming new rules.
Theymos in my very own opinion has a very good sense of what's needed for the forum and does very well in implementing new features and rules. But sometimes it feels like a blind eye is turned to serious complaints that a minority of users care about. And some other times, the opinion of Theymos is regarded too highly even if it's not mandatory to do so. Take his new thoughts on trust ratings for instance. Many users have been quoting this post as if there's authority on trust ratings, even though they were never meant to be regulated.
Anyway, just my two cents. I think the community here is good at following rules, not making them. Features like merit fit the forum well but they were not made BY the community. Rather FOR it.