I don´t think so, because the "scaling forces" would be different in every point of the surface/solid owing to its resistance
for instance, when applying a force to a solid, the outer layer of a solid would be much more deformed than the inner parts because of accumulative opposition to that force
so to say the intensity of the vector you apply gets reduced progressively
Your description is quite clear.. its more like a 'soft selection' logic than a uniform scaling.
A progressive reduction of forces as you describe it wouldn't be so difficult, provided one figures out the logic of incrementing -- would it be based on distance from the outermost skin or would it be like the number/layer of connections from the outermost skin. And how would you deal with open Breps/Meshes where the outermost skin is not well defined?
I see another issue with that logic... imagine squashing a cube with other objects inside. If the objects inside are to be squashed less than the cube, they would start protruding out of the cube at some point.. how would you deal with that?