Maybe bringing in the first suggested merit decay will be a nice idea. Let's say, for instance, if a member receives merit and tries to stack their Smerit for X period of time, it will decay in their profile if it's not spent. Maybe it will push and motivate members to be spending their Smerit regularly.
And that's a brilliant idea, most especially if the merits received are been given a time interval of like 30days from the very moment it was received to decay if the user refuses to resend it out others. Because I'm pretty sure such policy will force people to resend release their merits.