Leadership Quote by Edward Koch

Koch’s line has the blunt snap of a street-corner verdict: no moral sermon, no technocratic fog, just a market ultimatum. Coming from a New York politician who loved a punchy sound bite, it’s less an argument than a framing device. The intent is to shut down sympathy for consumers angry about higher costs (taxes, fees, price hikes) by casting the purchase as purely voluntary. Don’t like the price? Exercise “choice.” End of story.

The subtext is doing heavier work. By picking “drinking” as the example, Koch invokes a behavior already tinged with vice and self-indulgence. It’s an efficient rhetorical move: if the product is alcohol (or something adjacent like cigarettes or sugary drinks), the audience is primed to see the buyer as responsible for their own predicament. That lets government off the hook for regressivity arguments and lets sellers off the hook for profiteering. It also quietly reasserts a particular model of citizenship: you’re not a victim of policy; you’re a consumer with an off switch.

Context matters because Koch governed in an era when big-city budgets were tight and political patience for nuance was thinner. “Stop drinking it” is the language of austerity sold as common sense: personal discipline as public policy. It works because it’s hard to rebut without sounding entitled. Its cynicism is that it pretends pricing is a clean referendum on desire, when habits, addiction, social life, and targeted marketing make “choice” less like a lever and more like a trap door.