I share your sentiment about mining not really being as decentralized as some would want it to be. It needs a large investment and the people who afforded it are now big players themselves.

Even then, what you have to understand that those are essentially individuals or privately-owned entities that do not have to justify their actions for political motives. When it comes to governments, it is exclusively about gaining political mileage. They can go to any extent for that and also have the wherewithal to do what they want. Bitcoin as a philosophy tells the common man that "Here is your money, keep it safe and no institution or government, no matter how powerful, will part this from you".

That is empowering and something that we have never had. This is really an answer to all the faults of democracies. Giving common people the freedom to hold money which cannot be hurt by stupid governments. When it comes to governments, or anybody in power, they have almost always fucked up things that require agreements. Conflict resolution isn't really a forte of governments. They dilly-dally over issues for political reasons and use all kind of machinations to ensure that their side wins.

Due to these reasons, it isn't really a good idea to have Bitcoin be controlled by a set of permissioned entities, no matter who they are or how many of them there are. This is also the reason that DPoS and PoS based chains cannot be trusted with foundational value. That is why we must have Bitcoin and the ability to be mined by anyone anywhere, no matter how small.