The complicated relationship that many citizens have with the post office was tested in Canada this summer, when a monthlong hiatus in much of Canada’s mail delivery over a labor dispute provoked few complaints. When Canadian postal workers struck in 1990 there was great pressure on government to make concessions. This year, opinion columns ran under headlines like “Who Cares?” and “Postal Strike? Bring it on Baby: Walkout a momentary nuisance — until people realize they don’t need the post office anyway.” The Toronto Star predicted that Canadians would “quickly figure out ways to use it even less than they do now.”

And guess what? Canada’s post office long ago ended Saturday delivery and house-by-house delivery in some newer neighborhoods. (Mail is left in banks of boxes at subdivision entrances.)

If there is fairly wide agreement that government mail delivery today in America has little practical value for many, there is little consensus about what do to about it. Few broach doing away with the post office entirely.

THE post office is a large employer, especially of minority workers, and laying off hundreds of thousands of employees in this economy would be extremely difficult. Even postal skeptics note that it still delivers essential communication to small subgroups that are not (yet) well connected online: the elderly and rural residents. And how else would we get subscription magazines? Ralph Nader has argued that the service should be maintained because it is a crucial delivery network for items like medicine in the case of national emergencies. For now, the overwhelming majority of Americans who pay bills online still prefer to receive paper statements.

But to cover its costs, the post office needs to keep mail volume high. And even some high-end direct mailers worry that the contents of American mailboxes are coming to resemble a paper infomercial. “The post office has to make sure the signal-to-noise ratio remains high — if TV was all commercials no one would watch,” said Hamilton Davison, executive director of the American Catalog Mailers Association.

Some experts favor a general “do not mail” option for people who do not want to receive any direct mail — although advertisers vehemently oppose that approach, maintaining that glossy unsolicited catalogs remain beloved by shoppers, and the postal system would most likely collapse if there were a sudden drop in its business. The Postal Service claims that 81 percent of American households surveyed in 2010 reported that they either read or scanned advertising mail.

So, Professor Lee asked: “If the Postal Service has become a subsidized tool for mass mailers, why does the state still own it?” Perhaps catalogs should be delivered by private companies, ending the centuries-old law that the only a government employee can place things in your mailbox. And what’s the point of getting mail every day, when recycling is picked up only once a week?