How much effort did the current whales put into actually becoming one. From my knowledge they either worked for it, got delegated out of trust or just invested a big amount of money. On one hand, it can make them superior, on the other, it didn't come free.

Delegation is often paid for but also the amounts of money invested, depending on the time of investment, can vary dramatically. Someone who invests 50000 USD into steemit today will have significantly less steem power than someone who invested 1000 USD in March 2017.