Why is labor worth negative value?

[Dargaron]

So, I started thinking about setting up a trade route with a nearby outlander colony (rather than just selling them whatever drops off of raiders), and figured I'd go into medicine. But then I took a look at the market values involved, and realized that by putting labor into the product, I'm actually losing value:

-Medicine takes 3 cloth, one Neurotamine and one Herbal Medicine. It has a Market Value of 18

-Neurotamine has a Market Value of 6
-Herbal Medicine has a Market Value of 10
-Cloth has a market value of 1.90

All told, I need to use 20+ value per unit of medicine, in order to produce a less-valuable product. This isn't counting the cost of building a Drug Lab+Research Bench as well as the opportunity cost of having a pawn research Drug Production and Medicine Production instead of, say, rolling smokeleaf joints.

Similarly, I checked (randomly) the Assault Rifle: the base Market Value for said rifle is slightly higher than the value of the Components and Steel that go into it, but the actual selling price is arbitrarily reduced by 80%(!)

So, what gives? Why is producing manufactured goods for sale so heavily discouraged that you're actually losing money vis a vis just selling the components raw? Is labor so cheap in the rest of the Rimworld that they'd rather buy cotton to make bandages than just buy bandages?

[Mr.Cross]

I like to think that they prefer the raw resource for the simple fact that it is more valuable, I.e instead of a rifle which can be used for one thing, they instead can buy the metal and components and turn it into... power generation, a ship, several different tables, and what not

[Panzer]

I guess the low value of medicine is to keep it affordable for the player in early stages of the game, the modifier for weapons is probably to keep your wealth from skyrocketing when raiders die at your doorstep, and as encouragement to earn money someway else than just selling raider stuff.
Kinda makes sense seeing how every faction is armed to the teeth, would be cool if there was no modifier for quality weapons though (excellent and above), those should be pretty rare.

I got burned during a quest that way, I got offered a golden spear for 1100 rice or something, the base value of the spear covered the cost, but the 80% modifier made it almost worthless