It was simply to say that the impact of the policy you recommend would be to increase energy prices. That's all.

My policy will not cause energy prices to rise. Energy prices will rise when energy becomes a scarce resource. The only way you can prevent energy prices from rising is by making energy a non-scarce resource, and the only way to make energy a non-scarce resource is to suppress third-world demand. Which is one of the essential points of a colonial relationship.

Imposing a levy or tax on energy imports is from being a dumb policy.

I did not say that it was dumb policy, only that it was dumb policy if the objective is to industrialise North Africa.

Plus, it's much much simpler than working on integrating 280M people and their government infrastructure into the EU.

It would also have been much, much simpler to not integrate Eastern Europe into the EU. And it would have been even simpler to never expand it beyond the original coal and steel communities, since France and Germany would then not have to support underdeveloped countries like Spain and Great Britain. In fact, it would have been much, much simpler to never start the EU in the first place and just de-industrialise Germany along the lines proposed in the Morgenthau Plan. Of course, in that case we would probably be having another major European shooting war right about now, but at least we would have been spared the mental anguish of redefining what it means to be European...

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.