If you could hire a private army, or maybe an army of pirates, Seasteading would work. But you have to pay them. Conquerors often paid armies by charging taxes to the lands they conquered, placing them in debt. The solders who were injured and missing arms/legs got their reward by collecting taxes and maintaining the taken land.
The book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, goes into this concept in great detail. Another book in this genre is The Dictators Handbook.
A game of Monopoly will turn the most affable man violent (you probably meant the monopoly on violence).
https://www.newsweek.com/how-russias-fsb-colonized-abkhazia-...
If (say) Tibet declared independence, there is absolutely no chance that China would nuke it. They would simply send in a whole lot of tanks and people with guns.
We are certainly not beyond having another major, cataclysmic war.
Sovereign autonomy is not determined by oneself. It is determined by others, specifically by recognizing the sovereignty. Without recognition, it's basically impossible to conduct any type of transaction with the outer world, for lack of jurisdiction.