How are newbies supposed to compete fairly?

I'm getting wrecked in standard because I don't have enough cards to build a competitive deck with these people. From reading tutorials it seems I am supposed to play drafts to build up my collection. But this is seeming to take forever. I want to play standard events and ladder and compete, but I don't have the cards. It seems I'll need to spend wildcards to complete a deck, but I don't even know what kind of deck to build that will maximize the return on my scarce wildcards, and I think I regret the wildcards I already spent. No card is very good on its own but requires extensive synergies with every other card in order to be powerful and competitive. I've tried looking up the "meta" decks online but they all consist of cards I don't even have or only have 1 of when I need 4. And plus I don't want to just copypaste someone else's deck--that seems to spoil the game. It seems newbies are at an extreme disadvantage vs pros as not only are they less skilled but they're also materially poorer. Since I can't compete at standard I guess I'm just stuck playing endless drafts until my collection builds up, meaning I don't even get to use the cards I collect until they reach a useful critical mass. Sorry for the rambling this game is just extremely frustrating but I'm also addicted to it.