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This is a funny subject to bring up in a video game, but if you're going to do Manufacturing, or any Industry activities generally, you're going to bump into the limits of the economic model of EvE. The game developers work hard to maintain a balanced economic system -- they have a professional economist on staff, and publish quarterly economic reports -- but there are real limits to what they can do.
The More-or-Less Official View
(we're a big, efficient market, with complete player manufacture) New Eden is a massive world with a huge population forming a capitalistic market. This means there is very limited state controlled production(NPC) of any kind. Most items are manufactured by players.