I recall at one point there seemed to have had been some thoughts that the merit system might be able to replace the trust system.. and then there are goals of having systems that might play out in more decentralized kinds of ways.. but then at the same time, there seems to be no real escaping some of the allegiances and alliances that form, and also sometimes the injustices that play out with some of the drama, too... even seemingly really good forum members might end up going through melt-downs of sorts.. there would likely be a lot of pissed off members if there were a discovery that the merit system would replace the trust system..
I think that, with current rules, merit and trust systems assolve very different functions on the forum. While merit system attains the effort put on the forum, the trust system attain “judgment” on the “trust” each one of us can put on a certain users.
As also recent event have demonstrated, the two aspects are often correlated, but can be also take opposite directions.
And the damage in the second scenario greatly overcome the benefit of a single system.