I have noticed something in the forum, I won't be pointing fingers at anyone but I believe most will agree with me that there is a high probability factor that people give merit to those who merited them in the past, therefore creating a merit ring. You can easily discover such people from their merit summary.
Yeah, if you look at my merit history you might think I'm trading merits with quite a few members--but I'm not. I've never asked anyone to merit me, or to trade merits, or indicated to anyone here (or elsewhere) that I'd accept anything in exchange for merits. Some people have found my posts good enough to merit, and sometimes they happen to be the same people I've merited. But I generally don't often look at where my own merits are coming from, and it wouldn't matter anyway. As a merit source, I've given merits to a lot of different members. Some of them I've given quite a few--and in a bunch, too--because they've asked me to review their post history. I don't know if that looks suspicious or what, but that's the reason for it.
That said, I was only talking about myself. I can't speak for anyone else, and I'm pretty sure there is some merit trading going on here on bitcointalk. Sometimes it's blatant, and in the past members would get tagged for obvious merit abuse. That stopped a while ago when Theymos gave the community his opinion on the matter.
Without the merit system, I can't imagine what the forum would look like. There won't even be any interesting subjects to talk about just shit posts flooding every board.
LOL. You should have seen it here prior to Jan. 2018 when the merit system was rolled out. It was non-stop shitposting, and no sections were exempt from this. And after the merit system was introduced, there were so many threads in Meta about merits started by low-ranked members it was ridiculous. All the account farmers and those who thought they'd be able to easily maximize their earnings through sig campaigns had their dreams go up in smoke overnight. It was beautiful to behold.