A little random thought: just how much profit does a shipyard make?
As a skilled trade, it could be easily be a "quadruple your money"
industry, which means that starships are incredibly cheap in actual
terms.
However, that means that starships are actually incredibly cheap, and
raises the question of "why doesn't someone undercut other shipyards
by accepting a lower profit margin?"
Let's say the purchase price of a ship is double cost of all building
expenses, and quadruple the cost of materials. Breakdown so far: 25%
materials, 50% profit, 25% everything else.
Let's put labor at 20%, and admin/legal overhead (plus shipyard
facilities) at 5%.
So, with the fact that 50% of the base purchase price is profit, we
can now ask: where are the cheap shipyards?
Overloaded with orders from starship dealers, who stick to ironclad
rules about the price they charge. Now most of that profit is going to
the middleman, and he will black-list you from every dealer if you go
straight to the source...
But what if a shipyard deals direct to the public? Hmm...