Well, you can do all that until you cannot anymore. The systems are designed in such a way that Google only has to flip a switch, and all Chromebook securely turn into bricks (presumably only the ones that haven't had developer mode enabled).

On top of that, Chromebooks are mostly used in an education environment where they are in fact locked down to Chrome OS for specific email address domains. Then the domain administrator can conveniently switch it into a brick.