You are correct, the system is bad. The crew you’re hearing from in this thread are the types that like to blow smoke and pretend that ganking new players is actually good for them and teaches them about the game and encourages them to stay longer.
Yes, you can focus learning on a few specific areas, and perhaps be somewhat effective in a lower-end ship within a few months, and go try to do some PvP or something. These people will try to sell you on the fact that “you can be in a cheap ship with level 4 skills and T2 weapons in a few months, and be competitive”.
They ignore the fact that while you’re in that ship, the vet will be in an assault or faction ship with more skills, better weapons, more expensive ammo, more experience at fighting, more ships to swap into, more ISK so they can afford more losses, etc.
In EVE, new players are competing with vets in every arena as soon as they enter the game. In the market, in mining, in PvP, in exploration, everything. And the vets like it that way and want to keep it that way. There’s no sugarcoating this, it’s bad game design, it drives away virtually all potential new players, and they can’t really admit it because making that the common public reply will just result in even fewer new players.
That said, new players can and have started EVE every day of it’s existence, and it’s always been an uphill battle against the odds. You don’t survive that battle by taking expensive, easy targets into low sec to earn a little more ISK than in high.
You get over the initial “everyone is better than me at everything” barriers by playing smart and choosing your approach carefully. You read up on the traps and decide what you’re going to use as your learning experience. You expect that you’re going to lose your ships often, and you learn the game in cheap ships that more than pay for themselves with the results of what you do.
Missioning, mining and exploration are all more profitable (when done carefully) than what you’re going to lose. WH diving, faction warfare, the same. As others have said, if you can’t make it over those barriers on your own, then find a group or corp to work with.
And lastly, if you look at all those challenges and say “nope, it’s not for me”, don’t worry about it. It just means you agree with something like 96% of all new players who try EVE and give up on it.