Government ends up too big when it fills a vacuum left by citizens and groups. Unfortunately, bloated government also leaves gaps in management and bureaucracy that allow for corruption and failure to perform. As the saying goes, "The only thing worse than doing a union/government man's job for them is to make him do it himself." I would replace that with "human's job" and then define humanity's job as "serving the place they depend upon". Humans in general expect guidance, and the recent (200 years) developments in democracy expect citizen participation in that guidance: at least in choosing who makes the rules. For every person who leaves litter lying around, some 3 people have to be involved if "the government" is expected to pick it up. For every $10,000 of government spending, $40,000 of taxable revenue has to be 'stimulated' in order to tax it. The reverse is true when trying to limit government: if we tell someone to pick up the trash in front of their house, we might put 3 people out of jobs they aren't doing. A gratuitous example, but multiply it by all of the people buying Russian oil vs. the cost of the Cold War strategy-based military (on both sides). We've spent so much of our money, resources and time building up to this competitive point that people have forgotten we really never needed it in the first place. Telling the world that all people are both deserving and responsible of their own places is insignificant to the machinations of global niche-filling economics (People driving to jobs to buy cars to drive to jobs to make money to pay for wars to get oil to drive cars.).