To me, I believe there is some level of fairness in this merit system; if you put your effort into making a good post, you will earn some merits. If your friend had worked hard enough, as he has said regarding his post quality, he could have earned more merit for himself. I don't know how the system worked back then when he was active here, and I don't know how long that might have been. But all I could say is that there might have been more to his absence than just merit.
If I am to use myself as an example, from the beginning I thought making good posts required some kind of magic power or something, but the more I spend my time in real life, the more I realize that what I taught was actually not the case. My first merit award motivated me to put more effort into learning more things around the forum, and in doing so, I also shared my own side of the idea, which earned me confidence and merit as a reward for my efforts.
I added more of my time here when I realized how beneficial the forum could be to me. That's when I ranked up to a member rank, and back then there were few campaigns that were still accepting member ranks on their signature pay roll. Those earnings gave me more inspiration to keep on pushing, telling me that it's not all a waste of time to be here after all; it's not just learning but learning and at the same time earning.
In everything we do in life, consistency matters a lot. Your friend, whom I might consider a quieter, did not get the result he was expecting from the beginning, but that does not mean it will all be the same in the coming days. He should have realized how everything works by himself earlier before he could have even engaged in that conversation with you.
@Justtoons that has been inactive just gave you merit few minutes after your post creation, coincidence or your alt? Or are you trying to initiate some kind of some spray here? Sound like what someone that's crazy as a loon would say, right?
An inactive account? You could call the account the OP's alt, but meriting a post is not enough evidence to say an account is someone else's Alt. That account doesn't look active to me, looking at the post history and merit earned, and it's been working for the past few days.