Why is it a bad thing that Steem and its founders mined so many in the beginning?

What you are saying is that they intentionally gave less information to others to give themselves an unfair advantage at mining a currency. As we are talking a about a currency that is intended to be used by everyone I think this would be bad, as not everyone had an equal opportunity to gain that currency. Also it increases centralization.

I think the idea of a start-up based upon a currency is wrong and also rejected here I believe. Steemit is a start up and uses the currency steem to monetize. This is fair - an equivalent would be coinbase. But gaining a large stake in token which is meant to be used by everyone via hiding information would not be fair.

I am speaking hypothetically here - I do not know if the information that you provided are all correct.