I quite agree - it's ridiculous and the same level of convenience is not afford to the passenger if his/her plans change on a non refundable ticket. It can actually be even worse - some airlines only consider a schedule change sufficient to trigger refunds if it moves by 5 hours, which is ridiculous if like most people you have onward arrangements made.
I try to mitigate the effect of this sort of thing by making sure that I don't have anything else scheduled immediately before or after a long haul flight and that I have a day after arrival where the itinerary is reasonably flexible allowing say a 24 hour late arrival to not destroy the rest of the trip. You shouldn't need to do any of this, but I guess thats how things are..