Abstract
According to Franco Modigliani's relative income hypothesis, a consumer holds the memory of the "utmost satisfaction ever experienced", which affects his/her later consumption behavior. A similar formulation may be made for the "utmost fear ever experienced". The oil crises in 1973 and 1979 were indeed the utmost fear for the Japanese industry, but it stimulated innovation, which led the country to the top position in energy productivity, thus engendering "the utmost hubris". Everybody knows which of them prevailed and brought about what. The oil price of $147 per barrel in July 2008 was certainly another fear, which prompted the development of photovoltaic solar cell (PV) energy technology in various industrial sectors. The solar technology is fundamentally different from the conventional technology based on fossil fuels, and suggests a direction to Daniel Bell's "post-industrial" society and further more, "post-oil" society, free from the limitations of the economy based on goods production and mechanical technology. For this to become reality, a policy design would be required which combines the 147-dollar fears with the recognition that the "utmost hubris" resulted from the "utmost fear" in the 1990s.
