I think theymos has seen many suggestions like this before, but with this kind of twist, I believe getting more is essential or more glorifying rather than suggesting to de-rank yourself.
Derank is for incapable members that are at higher ranks in the forum while they belong to old generations before Merit system kick-off in January 2018 or they ranked up during merit system era since 2018 but by buying merit, exchanging merit and their posts are low quality.
Posters can be inactive but still received merits for past contributions and past posts while active posters can not receive any merit since January 2018 if their posts are all useless and no quality.
Posters with some or many received merits don't mean they are quality posters and you can not only look at merit numbers to assess their quality. Read their posts, and their merited posts to assess their post quality.
PowerGlove has this
Rank up / down thread.