We still have most of the spoilers to get spoiled.
I think the lack of Competitive-ness is at least partially due to the expenses of a good deck (and entry fees) and from what I recall from my B12 demographics, folks here don't have a lot of money.
Personally, I'm very interested in getting past FNM level (also in becoming a DCI-certified judge, but that's a while off...)
Still, if history is anything to go by, I'd say a good 80%+ of any given post-rotation deck will be made of cards already in Standard. U/W Control already has a strong shell with RTR Block, and the only way I can realistically imagine me not wanting to play a deck close to 99% exactly this list is if there are Theros duals that make it feasible to play 3-colors... in which case I'm switching to Esper, and having my wallet hate me for having to shell out for 3 more Thoughtseizes.
And true, money is definitely an issue, especially if MTG isn't the only hobby. Didn't realize that was a majority demographic on Bay12 though. It's not impossible to get places, however; I had a Legacy Dredge deck, a Grixis EDH deck, and a low-value Standard deck at one point on a $10 a week budget. Admittedly, this was after about two years of steady play, so a lot of it was from pulling chase cards at release/prerelease/prize packs and trading them away for format staples, making good trades and speculation, and just putting money into the game over and over. And that's with making plenty of mistakes along the way. It takes dedication to get somewhere on a tight budget, but it's doable if you have the patience. Also, it's possible to build budget decks that can do well at FNMs; MTGSalvation has a good budget forum for that sort of thing.
I've only been to a few higher level events, but even at my regular FNM, the quality of player is so, so much higher than all the other stores I've attended so it's still a good challenge. A good portion of the regulars have placed Top 8 or even won SCG Opens, PTQs (only Top 8's and Top 16's for these, sadly, so no one here has quite made the PT), and Invitationals. I've wanted to become a judge too, but I enjoy playing too much to go anywhere with that.