Never thought of it that way!
I always figured that token burns were a great way for whales to relieve themselves of some centralized power once things were stabilized and the purpose of the project was in the hands of the people. Like when the litecoin guy would get flamed for only trying to pump his own stake when shilling. Not sure of the specifics but he offloaded all of his stake (apparently) so that he could shill the vision and value. Litecoin crashed and never came back to that token level.
Totally sensible to understand that a chunk of premine being burned can be a pump scheme and question why that premine was printed in the first place.
Things that make you go hmmmmm!