Part of favoring small government is that there is an increased level of responsibility on the individual citizen to take care of themselves. You can have personal responsibility and freedom or you can have a promise of safety under a helicopter nanny-state. For liberalism to function, one must have a limit to how much responsibility the government has to take care of the people. A common line is if they're not going to put in personal effort, then government aid should be cut off from them. If they suffer for their laziness, it's not the government's responsibility. The government should only serve to enforce law and order, enforce contracts between its citizens, and protect its citizens from the tyrany of other countries wishing to force their ways upon them. Aid from the government such as welfare is a temporary luxury. When times become hard, govt aid will decrease and those reliant upon it will have to rely on charity and donations from sympathetic passerbys. It's not the role of the government to step in and try to stand in the way of people trying to get a Darwin award and perpetually feed parasites with taxes taken by force from its citizens. You cannot make sympathy into law.