Last time I went to America, the illusion of boundless wealth was rapidly shattered when I went to plug something in and was confronted by a little bit of plastic with two thing on the end, and couple of slots in the wall. I plugged the thing in, and it fell out. There were sparks. This is how I imagine things to be in North Korea.
[0] http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/149/635/934/934635149_988.jpg
Still I think there is room for improvement, perhaps something like a larger lightning/usbc plug with some of those safety features.
The drawbacks to the American NEMA 5-15 plug are that it is still a shock hazard as the pins aren't sheathed with insulating material. Also, the pins get bent easily and are a bit undersized for 15A in my opinion.
This was in Las Vegas and the cheap- and flimsy-looking plug sockets just struck me as a funny counterpoint to the unhinged level of excess that was on display everywhere else.
Also chances are the sparking isn't due to the way the plug is inserted in the socket. It's more likely due to the fact you have connected a capacitive load such as a computer power supply, and the fact the the mating parts of the receptacle are very close to the front making a spark more visible.
I just looked at the plug on my mac book air, it's identical and goes in easily either way around. It sparked when I unplugged it and plugged it back in again, both ways :)
Sparking will happen regardless of the way you insert the plug into the socket. This is probably due to a lack of inrush current limiting in the notebook power supply. When you plug it in, the discharged capacitors appear as a short across the AC line momentarily as they charge up. This is what causes the sparking.
*I'm sorry if I am using the wrong terminology.
Fuses in British plugs do not have much of a purpose. The idea is that the wiring in a wall has higher power rating than the cord itself and thus there is fuse on the boundary, but same effect can be achieved by placing the fuse inside the appliance (as is done everywhere else).
Removing the fuse will cause lead burn up if there's a short circuit in the device. If you look at the leads on some UK plugs the sizes of the wires can be very small. They can get away with this due to the fuses in the plugs.
While the article suggests that preferred practice in continental Europe is to have one (typically 16A) breaker per socket, it's not required and usually considered redundant.
Another reason (and probably more relevant) for the fuses in the plug I can see is that when wire that is part of the ring circuit gets broken, the safe current handling capacity of the circuit gets halved and the fuses then offer at least some protection from over-current.
It seems to me that whoever come up with the ring circuit idea understood that it's fundamentally unsafe and thus designed in additional protection measures so the thing at least looks safer.
For home/office installations in 230V systems, almost any dead short is enough to trip circuit breaker (and probably several of them in the current path), regardless of wire cross sections involved, as the fault loop impedance will still be small enough to cause >100A of fault current.
Common cords with CEE 7/7 plug on one end and IEC C13 on the other have 0.75mm^2 conductors, which seems to be sufficient for the 10A/70C rating. Two wire lamp cords (and Europlug->C7 cables) are also 0.75m^2. Normal three wire extension cords are 1.0mm^2 or 1.5mm^2 depending on length and (trustworthiness of) manufacturer. Recently, there are also two wire extension cords (CEE 7/17 -> CEE 7/17 "socket" for things like lawnmowers and Europlug -> Europlug socket for who knows what), these usually are 0.75mm^2.
In Czech republic, copper wiring in walls for sockets and lighting tends to be almost universally 1.5mm^2 with 2.5mm^2 used for long runs or industrial installations. It's my understanding that current Czech wiring standards essentially removed any ampacity->crosssection tables and derating factors and only specify allowed resistance of the wire run and it's temperature rise under load. I assume that something similar is also true across rest of the EU.
Plugs in Japan are like the american ones and they look really scary to me. Specially because here most of the houses are made of wood.