That's a great question - I didn't design this as an alternative to the merit system,
Funny considering the name of the topic 
Jokes aside though, it doesn't have to be an alternative or replacement, I think it's valuable regardless to open the door for more transparency and inclusivity...
But I do wonder what made you think that there was a need for an alternative to the merit system? Are there any problems it is addressing and what are the solutions that this tool brings?
The distributions of smerit might be too "controlled". I could perhaps agree with that. But would that necessarily mean that merited topics would be differently ranked with this new system? After all, a good topic is a good topic. The better a topic the more merits. Would a different ranking system look much different, aside from a few topics that have gained a disproportionate amount of merits due to being buddy buddy with higher-ups?
What about a system that ranks topics/posts on the amount of people from which the merits were received instead of a new ranking foundation, or the amount of merits received?
I think your idea just circles back to being a one-member one-vote system, except there is disproportionality, some people have plenty of votes and some have very few. I like the idea that this could be a good complementary system alongside merit, making reputation more democratic and giving broader insight from the community (as long as there is some sort of spam control, which I assume Vod has covered when he says it is cheat resistant...), with merit being like a sort of weighted trust from more experienced users.The distributions of smerit might be too "controlled". I could perhaps agree with that. But would that necessarily mean that merited topics would be differently ranked with this new system? After all, a good topic is a good topic. The better a topic the more merits. Would a different ranking system look much different, aside from a few topics that have gained a disproportionate amount of merits due to being buddy buddy with higher-ups?
What about a system that ranks topics/posts on the amount of people from which the merits were received instead of a new ranking foundation, or the amount of merits received?