Airdrop is a reward given to early adopters, either for doing some jobs or for believing the system at it's early stage. Let's assume that some people recieved bitcoin airdrop 10yrs ago, but because the persosn are unable to recieve more bitcoins, then the airdropped bitcoin will be retrieved from them. It doesn't go well to my view.
I am in the know that you are only attempting to drive home your point by comparing these two (dis-similar) situations, but even at that, this example is wrong and inapplicable, Bitcoin transactions once signed by the sender, broadcasted to the network and validated by a miner who gets the mathematical problem correctly, cannot be reversed. So even if we make an imaginal situation like you have done, it is not feasible as a result of Bitcoins irreversible nature; airdropped merits on the other hand is incomparable to Bitcoin transactions, it can be removed by Theymos if he feels the need to do so, or when he feels it is being of more harm that good, it is reversible unlike Bitcoin transactions, making it easier to achieve.
I do not send out merit to anyone with legitimate red tag, no matter how quality it is. I believe some persons are together with me on this. So anyone promoting 1xbit has a very slim chance of receiving merits.
Members with legitimate red tag can also make quality posts and deserve merits. The trust system and merit system are independent of each other, the trust system is for warnings and information about how trustworthy or untrustworthy a member is, leaning more on matters of trade and commerce. The merit system is for quality posts, and i have read some members say you must not even agree with these quality posts to give merits to them. So an untrustworthy user (in trade and commerce) can make quality posts and should be merited for them, no less that other members, only users that posts spam should be deprived of merits.