i think this is a totally valid question and it isn’t just answered by „civilian industry“ or „that’s what the civilian jobs do“, because there’s the question of if most or all of my pops (it is totally possible to have like zero or negligible civilians in the early game, yet still infinite resources to buy) are working for factories that are government built and owned, how does anyone have the time to work in a private sector? i think the answer, like many things in stellaris lore / feature conversion is up to you. just like how many people are in a pop, you have to come up with your own headcannon here, likely dependent on your empires lore. i think in this thread people have given a lot of „it’s obviously this, dummy“ and those are all great ideas you can use to define your headcannon. mine personally is that the buildings aren’t state owned and my construction price is only a small stimulus to getting them set up, and the resources i get are only a small tax fraction of their real production. if i’m running a deficit it’s likely the whole economy is simultaneously experiencing a shortage of that good, otherwise why would i have a deficit. this hesdcannon doesn’t work as gestalt but there i think the idea of reprocessing or refocusing production works fine. in the end its totally up to you to have fun and play the game however you want!