O_o

Governments are EVIL!!!

(Granted, they are China)

I wouldn't say evil so much as having an eye on the "big picture" even when claiming to be caring about the little people.  If this was government mandated the arguement would be that any inconviences would be offset by protection from famine and actually save lives.

Governments are the type that would answer the question "Would you personally kill someone to kill cancer." with the answer "Who wouldn't?"

That's why Libretarianism is on the rise.

More expesive, but less time intensive and less enviromentally taxing.

China has been moving to try and wean people off rice and move them to Potatoes because Potatoes take much less water to grow.  It takes 1,900 liters to grow 1kg of rice... and only 500 liters to grow 1kg of Potatoes.  So it's a safer crop to avoid droughts

Additionally Rice farming takes many many hours of expert manpower... the more and more you alter your fields the higher yield... it's not uncommon for rice farmers to spend 8 hours on individual family sized field  while potatoes you stick in the ground and you have at most 2 hours work for a regular family sized farm.

Apparently China has been trying to move away from rice and too potatoes because of drought hitting a lot of their farmland... along with other reasons.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/30/AR2010053003751.html

I wouldn't be surprised if this was part of their misplaced idea to wean people off rice.

I figured that it would be less resource intensive to produce potatoes than rice, I was thinking more towards the production of plastics and the manufacturing process that is involved in combining the two.

I see your point about water, and saving water is an important aspect to consider in agriculture. On the other side of environmental concerns though, producing 1Kg of polyethylene (which I believe they used in this rice) requires 2Kg of oil, which isn't exactly environmentally sound.

As for time resources, it may take 2 hours to harvest a family size plot of potatoes,  but to produce rice from them with the method mentioned here still requires the oil to be cracked and processed, and also requires a factory to combine the plastics with the potatoes, all of which requires skilled labour and expensive machinery and these can add to the production time considerably.

The real mystery is... how the hell did they make those fake rice cheaper than the real rice?

I tried looking that up.  Intrestinglty, this thread is the second google news entry for "Fake Rice."

Which is kinda crazy.

Maybe... it's plastic that was supposed to be recycled?  I dunno.

Actually as a security gaurd I protected a mall. Not just once but several times like 3 at least. Homeless people or people I thought were normal actually came up to me and asked me to arrest them and send them to jail. I actually had to explain to several people that security gaurd don't have the authority to just go and arrest people. I was like I can only carry out a citizens arrest.

One guy then asked me he's like "What do I need to do right now to get arrested, I want to go to jail". I was like Umm I dunno. He was then like "If I break that window or steal something from the store can you send me to jail" I told the guy again that I couldn't send him to jail. He then got confrontational and asked if he assualted me then would he go to jail. I ended up telling him if he assualted me I'd fight back and that might not be the best way to go. In the end I escorted him from the mall and never saw him again. (Probably in jail lol).

Holy crap, where's the punishment for doing the crime? Its like a resort I never saw TV's and video games but I'm betting if Canada has em that Norway probably does too. I mean seriously at least prison in Canada still has bars , cells and high walls (Fences) with barbed wire and stuff.

I mean I thought Canadian prisoners had it could, geeze lets all go commit crimes in Norway you get to live a better life then you would on the outside (In almost every country). Heck having coffee time and making your own breakfast, going swimming, sun tanning. Shit that prison is better then my normal life (No joke)!

I tried googling "fake rice", and this thread is NOT the second entry.