Buy whatever you'd like, but FWIW I've used the hell out of some bearing knives without any issues, beyond occasionally needing to take them apart and clean them which I would have had to do if the knives used washers or not.
For a year I made a point of flipping the same Spyderco Southard 10 - 20 times minimum (some days I flipped more than that). I'd read that titanium lock bars would wear terribly from meeting the harder blade tang, and since I owned multiple Southards I decided to see just how bad the problem would be. I carried this knife almost exclusively for year, and flipped it ~5,000 times that year, at least. It's still one of my most carried Southards, and it's done all sorts of work. It's been covered in blood, dropped in mud more than once, used to cut up juicy fruit, dropped in water (once four feet of very cold river water, that was fun--I thought it was gone forever). It's got some nicks and scratches, and the copper wire is almost entirely gone from the ultra-thin LSCF scale I had made for it, but if anything it feels smoother and more perfect than the day I first got it.
At the risk of being called an idiot that doesn't know what he's talking about, I would honestly say that this knife, my most-used Southard (flipped many thousands of times) feels smoother and more perfect than either of my CRK knives, action-wise. It flips hard, the action is silky smooth, though not free falling because I have the detent set quite strong. The knife has been carried and used for years, and outside of not being as pretty as it once was, it works better than ever.
Bearings don't make knives implode if used. Oh, the kicker? As for the lockup moving, it's still in almost the same place as the day I got it from my wife as a gift. So much for the need for steel lockbar inserts . . .
