All merged mining has done so far for me is create a sense of distrust towards any pool operator that isn't running merged mining pool.

The pool operators have a direct incentive to not implement merged mining openly which makes this a terrible situation for maintaining trust between miners and operators.

I wish the pool operators actually participated more actively in the merger and voted before allowing it to go live.
But then I suppose that would also ruin the same opportunity to steal... for the bad ones.