I'm going to disagree with most everyone here and say I think it's client lag. You see how his recording drops frames every time he places a block? Either his processor or his video card is struggling with the scene. I'm willing to bet that if you turn on the lag-o-meter and press F3, whenever you click to place a block you'll see white spikes. I also suspect that these spikes will happen if you hold down left or right click even while focused on nothing (air blocks). If you travel at least 200 blocks away from your base, to an undeveloped area, do you still experience these spikes? I suspect you won't.
I noticed this problem on an older computer, and it improved significantly when I overclocked my processor.