Basics seem to be decentralization, so at least they have to butter up a lot more people. But system also has to be competitive and centralization seem to bring some efficiency
Also, the smaller a govt is, the smaller attack surface, and the smaller attack surface, the cheaper it is to defend. And I suppose the people must be taught about this.
Of course, I know that people today will instead look for "woke" principles like how much we can steal from group X under the guise of fighting X's oppression of the rest, and to
force others to memorize your sexual preference under the guise of treating people with respect and so on. And they will continue to think govt has infinite money for such insanity.
