Although merits are needed for ranking up, but i think that theymos idea of merit is different from how it is working. Theymos idea of merit does not differentiate a newbie from a legendary member. The merit giver doesn't necessarily need to know the name of the user he is issuing merit to let alone the rank, but strictly on the quality of the post. If a legendary member makes 20 quality posts, those posts could all receive merits while a newbie who made 200 non quality post might not recieve even 1 merit. That is the merit system.
However, the merit sources are not machines, so they have conscience and that is why they see things differently and subjectively. Some at times give priority to newbies while others have high standards and keep recycling the merits among those they think make the quality posts.
A situation where merits are given regardless of the recipient's rank is simply impossible. And I don't see how that could be considered the original idea of the merit system. We all see each other's rank and the amount of merit we have. And all this information influence the decision of sending merits. Even when a person decides to give merit to someone, he often takes into account who exactly wrote a quality post, and may give more merits to the post written by a newbie, for example, than for the same post written by a legendary, because he believes that making quality posts is harder for a newbie than for someone who is already familiar with forum. Or, on the contrary, a person sends significantly more merits to a hero or legendary, although he does not need them to increase the rank, simply because he thinks that the higher the rank, the more merits the post written by this user deserves. If the idea was to make a merit system independent of rank and the subjective opinion that arises because of the user's rank, then it would be logical to hide the rank. And so it is available to everyone, everybody see the rank of every other user and, of course, it affects the decision to send merits.