Your quite right that he would, but that's just not how regions work. They all hang on something else. The ones that last rely heavily on myth. Daoism as studied in the west directly conforms to this mythic formation template. That's why it's so attractive. It's saying the same message as all the others.

It wouldn't be here if it wasn't called Daoism.

Any religion that hasn't taken onboard myth has died. This isn't the thread to go into depth about it: but, consider this: all the big faiths have the similarity that their prophet/son-of- God/founder didn't actually write their own words down. Jesus, nope. Mohammed, nope. Buddha, nope. Socrates, nope.

Laotzu, nope.

It's a viral meme of an idea, and what it says is this: there is a mountain with some sort of universal 'realisation' at the top. There are many paths up the faces of the cliffs; but, they all reach the same summit.

We need a name for it: New Daoism, Western Daoism, Zen Daoism (my preference given the mental similarities to Zen, plus the lack of much ritual; practice alone is the ritual like Soto, the use of impossible poetic phases; like Rinzai, the shared history between the two, etc etc. ). Whatever it's called, I find the idea of Daoism being a part of the Western revaluation that is ongoing (certainly, for example in my country national identity is being discussed) as a very very good thing.