Advantage over what?  Getting into signature campaigns?

Has it crossed your mind that most merit sources have been members here for years and have had to demonstrate to Theymos through their merit source applications that 1) they want to help the forum by volunteering to keep the merit system running, 2) they know which posts are merit-worthy and which are crap, 3) they've been here long enough to prove that they're not likely to abuse the system?

As far as sources receiving the most merits, that's not necessarily a negative (though I'd like to see more merits going to lower-ranked members).  If a source like fillipone or LoyceV, for example, is one of the top merit earners they've simply gotten more sMerits to hand out--which they will eventually if they run out of source sMerits.

This is a non-issue that I've never heard brought up before.  It reeks of jealousy, OP.