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defaults write -g ApplePersistence -bool no

Problem solved.

What exactly happens when you do this? Do we get the old (sane, pre-Lion) behavior back, or does it just disable versions leaving everything the same (which is worse)?

You get the pre-Lion behavior back.

For TextEdit you additionally have to disable autosave so you don't get error messages:

defaults write -app textedit AutosavingDelay -int 0

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