Mass democracy, reinforced by bureaucracy, inflationism, and transferism, creates an environment in which citizens are encouraged to embrace political beliefs that ordinary economic and social feedback would otherwise discipline. Put more simply, modern democracy plus bureaucracy incentivizes unrealistic beliefs. Instead of retreading previous ground, this article seeks to explore why and how democracy and bureaucracy uniquely create especially powerful incentives for political unreality. Since wrong political beliefs cost nothing personally but provide psychological rewards, rational actors will systematically indulge cognitive biases in their political thinking. Modern democracy and bureaucracy progressively separate decision-makers from the costs and feedback generated by their decisions.