Ngl this subreddit is probably a better introduction to Taoism than the Tao Te Ching. https://www.reddit.com/r/DesirePath/ 

道 often gets interpreted according to the modern sense of the word, like an asphalt road laid down by some anonymous authority that you're not allowed to stray from. At the time, though, nearly all roads would have been desire paths, created by their users.

In Lu Xun's words, 其实地上本没有路,走的人多了,也便成了路 ("while there was no road to start with, if a lot of people pass that way, a road will appear").

It's not that there are no constraints at all - it's still easier to walk on a desire path than through the wilderness - just that a systemically optimal order emerges spontaneously whenever enough people are searching for a solution to their individual problems.

It's not going to be great for everyone - if your house isn't on the path to your work, it still sucks to be you - but it's pretty much Pareto optimal.

It's also why the Qin administratration was so keen on standardising axel lengths: https://twitter.com/StatesWarring/status/1277609843646320640?s=19