This is NOT a bug.
This IS fair.
And you are incorrect about several mechanisms.
That said, it is probably to your advantage to read everything below.
I will explain:
1) You can vote on your own content, because the person that finds/shares it should be rewarded. I mean if you are unwilling to stake your own REL on it why would we want you incentivized to share something you think is irrelevant (prevents spamming a million things in hopes that one of them catches on)?
2) You DO NOT get REP from up votes on articles shared, only comments. You could get 1,000 up votes / bets on an article and your REP will not improve. The same is true for down votes on shared content. Your REP reflects the quality of your contributions not the quality of the articles of others. However good or bad that score is, that number was earned through action within the Relevant community.
3) If a member is always able to pick winners, that means they must know the relevant community very, very, well and that is what I personally want to see: a community with high-quality articles, not a community with a bunch of mediocre ones. Accordingly, those that help the platform succeed should be rewarded.
4) I will give you the exact boogey man scenario you mentioned, but in reality. So the only users with more REL than me were either on the site day 1 or on the team (only 2 or 3 in total I think). I posted a really good article (an interview with the author of The Fifth Risk) that likely no one here was aware existed. I shared it. I voted first on it. I voted all available REL on it (somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 I think) and it got hundreds of up votes. My payout? 602 REL. Now for many that will seem like quite a bit (and this was), but even in the best/worse case scenario that is a 1% return. I am betting that most new users would do MUCH better percentage wise in that scenario (or at least not worse). It is very possible that a new user in the same scenario might have made a 200 REL return on a 100 REL stake a 200% return.
5) What you describe might have still been possible 2 months ago, but now the bigger concern is semi-bots (coordinated but irrelevant humans). Because of that you WANT established members to have great power so that we can disincentivize the semi-bots and add real oomf to your good picks.
6) The only people who might be anywhere near the power of which you speak are either on the team or have been continuously and constantly active for a year or more. That power took work to acquire and it is largely in the hands of those who most want this project to succeed (and have the most to lose if it does not).
7) Since the top 50% of articles in terms of relevance pay out, as the community grows in size the ability to stake large on any significant proportion of articles decreases. My guess is that there are a community or two where bringing a high-level game would get out-sized rewards right now. If I were starting from 40 REL again, I know what I would do today. (Why don’t I do what I alluding too? Because I am giving myself carpal tunnel down voting spam and answering questions. As members have more stake in the community and its success, their behaviors will probably change from getting as much REL as possible to making sure the REL is worth as much as possible due to having an awesome, active, and healthy community.)
8) EDIT I initially was not going to do this, but I will drop a hint for those that read. Read the White Paper and understand the math involved and you will see WHY your concern is not really a concern. I would spell it out here, but I do not want to do that because it might encourage a totally different kind of problem. Long story short, there is a profoundly simple mechanism that levels the field in a way that takes most of your concerns away. Read the White Paper and the math, but do not post it if you figure out what I am talking about. So all of the above was a little smoke and mirrors, but the basic point is still the same. It does not quite work the way you think it does and you probably do not want this mechanism changed because it actually adds far more power to newer users than established users (again I will not say why and I ask that you not make it explicit if you do figure out why).
As An Aside: If you want to see something scary/cool look at the White Paper idea of up vote / down vote power = Community REP * REL !!! I do not think that has been implemented, but think of the above concerns but with someone like me having 50,000,000 power instead of 99.