These analogies are highly flawed, and different types of property are, frankly, different. Land just sits there and doesn't require anyone else to take action in order for you to use it. Putting up a fence is an action which requires authority.

In this case, witnesses are declining to process certain (hypothetical) transactions because they do not believe, on balance, those transactions are in the best interests of Steem. Stakeholders are free to vote in a different set of witnesses if they disagree with that judgment (and I wouldn't rule out that this may well happen especially once some very large stakeholders have found out about the situation and decided to weigh in on it).