No guarantee, it's possible that the vendor trash is more expensive than the combined materiel cost to create something better, and those greasy NPCs will be raking us over the coals, so to speak.

You're missing the point. Vendor items fill a niche market of cheap disposable items. They are intended to be a stopgap supply when characters don't have much money. If they thought it was possible for crafters to produce items as cheaply, they wouldn't have bothered designing the vendor ones.

Plus from a value perspective, crafter items are like 5 to 10 vendor items in one with respect to durability. Crafters can't produce anything equivalent to the disposability of vendor items.

Yes disposable npc items is a very small niche but it must be overlapping with the very low-"level" crafted items. Until we know exactly how low-"level" we're talking I don't see how you can claim that it's impossible for crafters to compete with the npcs. So far I've not seen any indication that crafters can't be the ones selling the starter-gear but you might be right, time will tell I see the npc-items as a safty net in case no crafters are interested in making and selling starter gear. Perhaps that's in need of some clarification from Moll/developers?

it's only the most common resources that can be brought from npcs and you don't even have to buy them. Resources can also be gained from salvaging items (except those brought from npcs) and from fighting in mutantinfested mines.

I'm very much aware of that the npc items will be the lowest form of gear you can have but there's still no mentioning at all about the price.  As far as I remember all that's been said about the npc items is that it ensures that you can always get some starter gear if you get completely looted and that it'll be cheap. You could be right but until we see how the economy works out, and how cheap "npc cheap" is compared to "crafter cheap", I'd still call it a possible market for crafters (at least starting crafters)

Sounds way more logical this way